Holiday from Her Holiday
by jkwasher
Summary: Walt and Vic meet my fictional world in western Colorado while fleeing a conspiracy.
1. Chapter 1

**Holiday from her Holiday**

 **Chapter 12**

 _ **A/N: Fading in for a brief visit to LL…Longmire Land. I should have my WordPress site up and running later this week, for the fan royalty who was so negative. Good to be back, with another installment of "Walt and Vic meet my western Colorado sandbox."**_

They descended into a smaller metro area than Denver. Vic could see a huge mesa in the distance, but they passed all the exits to Grand Junction. Walt kept driving, unperturbed.

"Where are we headed?" She really wanted to know, if they weren't stopping in relative civilization.

His lips bunched. "Peachy, Colorado. Home of orchards, mesas, wine country." He looked over and raised his brows. "This part of the west is very romantic, they say." He waggled his eyebrows.

"Uh-huh." She hoped the sarcasm showed.

"Could be?"

She shrugged. She was in an unaccountably good mood given she'd been dragged from Bismarck to Durant to Denver and now western Colorado all because of some conspiracy, especially since the FBI seemed to have been compromised somewhere in the thick of it all.

Well, she was convinced it was enough that here she was with Walt, who she had written off six months before. And this was a different Walt, one who smiled, who cracked the occasional joke, who ate burgers with her again, and now held her at night. This could not be the same man who had pushed her away so callously. Something had happened in the last six months, she was just still not sure what.

"So who is in Peachy?"

"Well, Lester, for one. He has a friend named Jim Keller who's an attorney I've met before."

"So this Lester is really the Sheriff of Orchard County?"

"Yep."

"Have you ever locked horns with him over a case?" My God, she really did have the local lingo down, didn't she? Philly Vic no more.

"Not really, such different jurisdictions."

"I suppose that's true."

"Steve said we're welcome as long as we want to stay. His daughter Lita's there, but it's just the two of them. His son Simon starts back, I think as a—junior?—at University of Colorado in a month or so and is already living in a dorm."

"So he has room for us."

"So Steve said. I actually had something else in mind…but I need to talk to Lester first."

She tilted her head, puzzled, as they descended into a little valley flanked by two small mesas. Rows of orchards marched along the bases of both.

"Fuck, that is so scenic."

"Yeah, it's beautiful over here. All sorts of fruit orchards run up against the mesas. Lester owns half of a winery that his brother runs. They raise varietal grapes and put out some decent wines."

"So, you both are sheriffs and lost your wives? And, wait…you also know something about _wine_? More than a few things in common?"

"And the Marine connection, so a few, but he's got four kids and he hasn't been a sheriff as long. He's younger."

"Dating?"

Walt made a face. "How would I know that?"

"I mean, guys talk, don't they?"

"It's only been a little over a year for him, Vic. We haven't discussed it. Why do you want to know, anyway?"

She thought he sounded almost… _nervous,_ so all she said was, "Oh."

"What…are you looking for him to ask you out?"

"I—" She didn't want to screw this up. Instead of snapping, she exhaled. "No. I—guess I just don't want him doing what you did."

He tilted his head, but his lips pressed together. His stubborn look. "That being?"

"The whole checking out on ASD for a year. It wasn't until after the case on Pronghorn Ridge you finally returned to your job. I've never seen anyone else just disappear from life for that long, pretty much the entire first six months I worked for you."

"Well."

"You seemed happier after that."

A pause filled the Toyota. He took a deep breath. "I was. You were the reason, Vic."

"I made you happy?" She'd been happier, with him, with work, even when Sean was being a dickhead.

"Happy, but still angry inside. Angry Martha was murdered, angry at the murderer, angry at myself that I failed her, angry that she had left me alone."

Vic unclicked her belt and slid toward him. The gearshift kept them apart, and she cussed under her breath. He brought his right arm around her and she leaned in.

"You helped me through that, Vic. Not by trying, just by being there. By my side, and by not letting me stay inside my head. Not letting me get away with anything. No one else in Durant had the guts to do that."

She burrowed into his shirt. "And then you pushed me away."

His arm gathered her in tighter. "I know."

They pulled into a charming tree-lined street, and up to a simple two-story Craftsman house.

"This is it."

She looked over to him that he had found it without a map, written directions or GPS. "Been here, before?"

"A couple of times, he, his sons and I went fishing once, hunting another. Once in a while I just needed to get away from Durant." He seeme to wander off in his head again.

That last line made her take note. She'd never heard him express any interest in travel or leaving Wyoming. She'd never seen him take a vacation. That must have been before Martha's death, before she was hired.

"From Martha?"

He shrugged. "Not necessarily.

"Cady?"

"No."

"Okay…"

"Just leave it." She recognized it as a topic to file away for later.

A man maybe not quite as tall and somewhat stockier came striding from the house. This must be Lester. He wore a cowboy hat, which almost hid heavy brows over a lightly-creased but kindly face. His sideburns were threaded with silver. She saw where Steve got his looks, and why Walt liked him, Lester had on a plaid shirt and jeans despite the heat.

"Walt! Good to see you again!"

Walt walked around the car, and did the man shake/hug thing. She unbelted, got out and waited for him to introduce her, before noticing the mossy green eyes. The man did have nice eyes.

"Lester, this is Victoria Moretti. Vic, Lester. Vic is—was—er, my—deputy."

She smiled and gave Lester a firm handshake, both aware and amused that Walt no longer knew what to call her.

"Late of Bismarck P.D.."

Lester's brows raised, and they were formidable, indeed. Vic decided instantly she preferred Walt in every way, but the other sheriff did seem kind.

"We would like to make some phone calls and figure out what the hell is going on," said Walt.

"Sure. We'll head over to my office after lunch, which is ready and waiting, first."

Lunch was heavenly. She gave Lester high marks—he could cook. The lunch he served proved he could more than cook, he was damned fine at it.

Her compliment "Even better than pancakes!" earned her a glower from Walt.

She knew he was nervy, uptight and worried over almost everything, but the glower turned to a look which she had seen before, like he'd get even later. She lifted an eyebrow, like _message received_.

After lunch, Walt insisted helping Lester rinse dishes.

He put the last of them in the dishwasher before turning to Lester.

"Still have that cabin near the end of the box canyon?"

Lester finished drying his hands, surprised. "I do. You want to hole up there?"

"If it's available. Haven't been there since you and the boys and I went fishing up there."

"Still plenty ot trout in the stream."

"Vic might like that." She knew he was referring to their aborted trip to Fred's, and what had almost transpired there.

"Sure. "I'll give you the keys and let Thad and Arliss know you'll be by, and in what vehicle. She usually stocks it before guests come in."

"We can, we don't want to be any trouble."

"No trouble, Walt, no trouble at all. After what you've said, why don't you make your calls from here, we'll pass on the station. No reason for more people to see you, and It will give Arliss time to freshen the place."

Walt looked to Vic, who gave him a look of agreement.

"You can use my office."

The man was definitely kind.

XXX

"We should keep watch, just in case."

"So much for a relaxing week sleeping in your arms." He blushed, to her satisfaction.

She of course was in Mother Nature's thrall, four more days. Three left in their week there, if there were no surprises.

Walt insisted she go to bed first. Chivalry was not yet dead, neither in keycards nor in Walt Longmire's sense of what was right.

He had come to bed late, shaken her shoulder, and taken second shift. She woke, showered, made coffee and had just pulled her feet under her on the glider, and tensed when she saw a mote of dust in the distance, which turned into a large motor truck. She had a moment where she almost called Walt, but relaxed as she recognized Lester's Yukon.

He pulled up and stepped down.

"Walt awake?"

"Not yet. Can I offer you coffee?" It would only be neighborly, since it was his house.

"Sure. I kind of wanted to get your opinion on something, if you have time."

All she had at the moment was time.

"Sure."

She went in, brought out sugar packets and a bottle of milk with the coffee, just in case.

"I take it black."

"Ah, another sheriff who takes it black."

He gave a somewhat sheepish grin, and removed his hat as he sat on the chair facing her. She was instantly reminded of Walt's inquisition couch in his office. A couch she had dreamed of using someday in an entirely different way…

"Walt mentioned you a while back. Said you came from Philly?"

"Yep," she said, almost smacking her lips. She wasn't entirely comfortable where the conversation might be going. She really didn't want to have to rebuff Walt's friend if he was hitting on her.

"There's, um, someone I might be interested in."

Oh, great, was he as fumble-tongued as Walt? She mentally prepared a gentle rejection, just in case.

"Um. No, that's wrong. I _am_ interested in her. She's a vet."

"Oh," she said, initially more surprised than pleased. She quickly reversed on that. Walt would be pleased, too, but he was more knowledgable than she about former servicemen and women..

"I think she's about your age, but I haven't dated since, well, Walt probably mentioned that I lost my wife last year."

"Yeah," she said, with genuine compassion. "I'm very sorry about that."

"I, uh, I just don't know what the current convention is, how to go about it."

"Current—what?"

"I mean, how do you get asked out, now?"

That question threw her, she hadn't been in a real dating situation for a long time, either, and then, it seemed like flirting had been the norm. Maybe it wasn't, and she sure wasn't going to suggest that.

"Well…tell me about her."

"Well, I believe she's part Indian."

"Indian, like…"

"Like Crow. Like in your Durant neck of the woods. My family's originally from near Billings."

"Oh." Then he was probably right about the vet's heritage.

"I think you might have noticed her yesterday while you were in town. She was in the grocery store I took you to."

"A woman?"

"Tall, long blonde braid, darkish skin…? She was wearing a camo coat?"

"Oh!" She'd thought the woman was some kind of local activist or troublemaker.

"She treats both large and small animals. She's worked on the horses here, before.

"Vet? _Veterinarian_? And you want to ask out the vet?"

"Yes." He seemed acutely embarrassed. "I mean, she's younger than I am. I've been worried the local ranchers will attract her. You know, better-off than a sheriff. Any advice?"

Vic's lips twisted. She thought of her own complicated situation. "Not so much. Have you told her you like her?"

"No, we—we sometimes see each other at county calls. Dead deer in the road, the like. Sometimes she comes out to euthanize or treat wildlife, or dogs hit by cars."

"Cheery stuff…have you thought of going to her clinic or her house and asking her out?"

From his deer-in-the-headlights look that reminded her of Walt, she guessed not.

"It's like"—she wanted to be bracing—"riding a bicycle. You know, you never forget? Just tell her you would like to take her to dinner. Do either of you have anything in common?"

He twisted his hat in his hands. "I believe so." He didn't elaborate.

"Then you should tell her, probably sooner, not later. She's very pretty."

He looked her straight in the eye. "She's the most beautiful woman I've ever seen, and if she's amenable, I would like to marry her, someday."

"Oh!" Now, _that_ she had not expected. She took a last sip, only to see Walt standing all rumpled in t-shirt and jeans in the frame of the open door.

He smiled and she melted. She didn't care if Lester Brannan saw it.

"Victoria here, she's been giving me some advice. I'm an old dog with old tricks." He laughed.

"You'll do fine," she said, making room for Walt on the glider.

"You want some coffee?" she asked him. "I'll get it for you if you two want to talk."

"Sure," Walt croaked. He must have just put his jeans on and come out.

"Need a refill, Lester?"

"Sure, if you have enough. I'm not much awake yet, either."

She smiled and headed into the kitchen. A woman must have designed it, because the kitchen made sense. She filled a mug for Walt, and took the pot out to refill Lester's.

As she neared the door, she heard Lester's voice.

"So…Vic is your…?"

Walt must have shaken his head. "Still trying to figure that out."

"She loves you."

 _She_ almost dropped the pot.

"She giving you advice on love?" he asked wryly. Wish she'd give me some."

She backed up and made some noise. She refrained from _fuck_ but wanted them to know she was close. She handed Walt his mug.

"Thanks," said Lester with a grin as she refilled his cup. His wife had been the recipient of that smile, and possibly the vet would be, if Lester played his cards right. Lucky ladies. As she laid the pot on a hot pad on the table, she caught Walt looking at her. She smiled back. A private smile.

Maybe the _veterinarian_ wasn't the only lucky lady around.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two**

 _ **A/N: Merry Christmas Eve! At least it is beginning to feel more like it…supposed to have a little snow tomorrow in Denver. The following still doesn't 'feel right' but at least moves things along. Hopefully Chapter Three will follow tomorrow.**_

Off early after her pithy exit from the Pony, and after the two brief drinks which consumed one after the other without food had made her a little light-headed, she realized she didn't have anywhere to hole up, anymore.

She wondered if she would end up on one of the park benches that dead guy had occupied a couple of years before. She sure didn't want to run into Cady in her current state, she might take the woman's head off. The station was populated by Ferg, the library was closed and she had no place of her own. The casino was not an option, and she really didn't have enough money for a hotel that week.

She quite simply didn't know where to take herself off to, to find any peace, anymore.

It was going to be sub-zero that night, staying out in the cold was not an option, or she could have gone camping or taken the truck up in the hills where nobody would bother her.

Her phone rang. Cady's number showed.

"Hey, dad was just here looking for you. I think he was worried."

Great. He'd put out an APB out on her if she didn't watch it.

"I'll call him," she promised Cady.

But her finger just resisted poking the green _connect._ She waited a while, until her breath steamed the windows enough that she finally forced herself to punch the button to connect with his cabin, and sighed with resignation.

"Vic?" Did he sound panicked?

"Hey. Cady said you stopped by."

"You were drinking. I just wanted to make sure you're okay."

 _No, I'm not okay._ "Sure. Have a good evening."

"I wondered—"

She waited.

"Would you like to come out to the cabin for a while this evening?"

She was no longer waiting, she was busy retrieving her jaw from where it had dropped on the floor.

"Vic?"

She took a deep, shaky breath.

"What the _fuck_ , Walt? Are you drunk again? If so, don't walk or drive anywhere. It's too cold to be drunk outside, even."

"I'm not drunk."

"Well, _something's_ wrong. Maybe your phone is cutting out. It sounded like you invited me to your cabin."

A pause. "I did."

Well, it was now or never to throw it back. "What ever happened to _the exact nature of my relationship is none of your business_? Seems to me you just crossed that line _you_ drew in the sand. You know, that sort of thing doesn't work just one way. You don't go calling around trying to find me on my off hours. You don't engage in after-hours social intercourse, or burgers and such. Those might be considered dating. Personal lives."

Another pause. Longer. He sounded exhausted. "Maybe, maybe I did cross it. I'm just tired of trying to play it neutral, trying to be above it all to keep you all safe."

" _Safe_?"

"You know, out of the line of fire."

"Walt, that is _our_ job and _our_ choice. Not yours, unless you want to fire us _en masse_."

"After Branch…"

Her lips twisted. "After _Barlow_ you berated Eamonn and me for finding the dead girl's ID without letting us know your _arrangement_ with Jacob, corrected me in front of Mathias, refused to get a burger with me, told me, 'some people don't know how to end things'— you lied about wearing the new shirt and threw your lot in with Donna, a woman you didn't know, one you hadn't spent almost every day for the last four years with— you made it _pretty clear_ , Walt. If I didn't misunderstand you when I signed those papers in your office, _something_ had changed. That's why I asked tonight, _what_ changed. Maybe it was just all a big misunderstanding. I actually _hoped_ that's what it was, that I misunderstood you when you asked me to stay."

He cleared his throat. His voice came through very soft. "You didn't misunderstand. My feelings didn't change, but I lost a deputy, and hadn't handled anything with you or Branch very well. If that lawsuit had come to fruition because of improprieties with the staff, it could have sunk the entire department."

"And then Donna."

"And then Donna—I thought she was safe. My age. A professional. Someone I thought I should pursue because of a dream I had. I thought she was Martha's replacement, but she was… a mistake. I only saw her a few times after the cabin. She, um, didn't like how I handled myself there, and she said I was broken beyond her fixing."

"No shit! She said _that_?"

"She dropped me, and Ruby's mad at her for it, but I'm so sorry, Vic."

She waited a beat, to see if he was finished. He evidently was.

"It's been hell, Walt." It was probably time to get back to Cady's. The truck was getting really cold, her fingers numb.

"I know. When you told me about Eamonn, I just…"

"I know. You snapped. You put me in my place. I finally figured out that you were retaliating with Donna. And you're still mad, which is why you still yell at me now, when you don't even know it. I was just surprised Ruby spoke up. And Eamonn was once, Walt, just _once_ , and he told me to get my shit together before we could be anything else, anything more. He was right, I didn't have my shit together, but I won't be a consolation prize, Walt."

Her teeth began to chatter.

"Vic, I know I don't deserve anything from you, I just wanted to talk." A pause. Maybe he heard the chattering. "Where are you?"

She huffed out a voiceless laugh. "My truck." She was still registering his words, _I just wanted to talk._ Where had _those_ come from? His therapy with Dr. D?

"It's way too cold to stay there. You won't come out to the cabin with me to talk?"

"I don't think so."

"Well, at least—get warm. You must be freezing."

"Yeah." Her throat closed up. "I will." She couldn't manage more. She hung up.

Despite the ambient temperature of around seventy Fahrenheit inside Cady's place, it seemed like some of the parts she hadn't used for a while like her heart didn't thaw out that entire night, and she was desperately afraid they might stay frozen for a long, long time.

XXX

She usually didn't sleep real late at Cady's, but she didn't have to be in until five that evening, and it was somebody at the door, not the usual sensation of her head pounding, which woke her the next morning.

She cracked the door open, hiding behind it wearing only her t-shirt and panties. The frigid air flew in.

"Vic?"

 _Shit._ It was _him._ "Oh, it's you." She wished she could wake up first to say something more apropos. "I'll get Cady—"

"I ran into her earlier. I'm here to make sure you're all right."

"I'm _still_ all right, Walt."

"You're not all right. You're angry, rightfully so, if what you said last night is anything to gauge by."

She stopped, annoyed, and canted her head. "You really _are_ Sherlock-y, aren't ya, Walt? You didn't hear what I said last night about checking up on me not being okay?"

She cocked her hip, and realized the door had swung open and her t-shirt had ridden up provocatively. "Shit." She tried to tug it down. "Walt, I can't talk to you like this."

"I can wait, if you want to get dressed."

"Walt, I can't talk to you _about_ this."

"We need to talk, Vic. More than just the phone."

She snorted. "Yeah, like _that_ will happen. Aren't you on County dime time? I don't come in 'til five."

"I'm the sheriff, and I'm taking a break."

"Well, break somewhere else. I'm not dressed, and I work evening shift. I'm going back to bed." She grabbed for the door, but to her disbelief, he pushed in, and she was confronted by an entryway full of sheriff, close enough to her to catch a whiff of his scent, the one which could make her go from zero to sixty in a couple of seconds if given a chance. She didn't want the chance. He was way too close.

"Fuck, Walt, I'm not dressed and this is Cady's house."

He reached for her. Primal self-defense kicked in, and she tried to knee, then kick him, but without her boots, she had little ability really hurt him close-range. He was so tall, it ended up a glancing blow, and he got her in a wristlock, wheeling her around. She acknowledged that he did have the superior leverage with those long arms, but she was spitting mad at being treated like a suspect.

She realized she was cussing up a storm, but he merely lifted her and carried her to the kitchen counter, where he stepped into the vee of her thighs, imprisoning her with his arms.

"I just want to—"

"Fuck it, leave me _alone_!" She tried to duck under one of his arms, unsuccessfully.

"Dad?" It was Cady, wide-eyed. Vic hadn't heard her come in, but she was carrying a drink holder with two coffees. At her voice, he half-whirled.

"I hope one of those is for him," Vic said, wriggling away while his attention was diverted, dived for her room, heart beating more than she could bear.

"You going to explain?" She heard Cady ask it, presumably of Walt, before she slammed the door shut. She heard a quick shuffle and the door slamming, hard. Vic peered out her window and saw him almost running from the house, and she'd bet a dollar he was blushing.

Cady knocked a couple of minutes later. "You want to talk about it, Vic?"

Too much Longmire. She didn't answer, dressed and flew out the front door before Cady could corner her again.

It was the straw and she was the broken-backed camel. Too much shit to process, she was just beginning to cope with Branch and violent dreams and divorce and beginning to function well at her job again. While they had been sharing a table and drinking at the Pony, Travis had ventured that maybe she was depressed. Despite Travis's misfortune to be a chronic chucklehead, she had thought maybe he was onto something, and maybe that's why she had gone for Eamonn, like she always went for a target. Straight, full frontal, and all that.

Mom Lena might be right after all, she at least needed a change from all the nonsense in Durant.

At the end of her shift, she left her written request for time off, and if not accepted, her resignation on his desk along with her truck keys and badge. The rental company even picked her up at zero-dark-hundred at the station in the car she'd reserved that afternoon. She dropped the driver in Sheridan and drove to Billings in the wee hours of the morning to catch her flight.

On the way to Billings, and for the first few days after her departure, there were a flurry of calls on her phone from the official ASD number. It didn't matter if it were Ruby, Ferg, or even Walt. She deleted all the messages. She didn't need any more half-baked apologies or _whatevers._ After that, there was nothing. She figured they must have finally accepted her at her word and given her the resignation and closure she'd sought.

Philly reabsorbed her.

XXX

Christmas came and went. Lots of family, both at the obligatory parties and behind closed doors, but not wondering at her wild behavior, probably just the opposite, what had happened to the Terror who had used to confound them. Now, it seemed she was the rain on their parade. She hadn't found anything to celebrate, yet. New Year's came and went and she grudgingly rocked the new year in, but didn't drink much and went home to her parents' house alone.

Ferg called her at the beginning of her third week of down-time, while she was puttering in her old bedroom at her folks' suburban home.

"He's in bad shape, Vic. Are you coming back? He said you were taking some time off."

She thought of his previous grieving and thinking bouts. "Bad shape—like, drinking, hiding out at the cabin, sulking like somebody did something to him?"

"No. Not at _all_ , and that's the thing—he's here every morning _before_ us. He hasn't added on any deputies to replace you, and is taking on the extra shifts."

"Whatever." She shrugged. It wasn't her problem anymore. She'd figured he'd accepted her resignation, shrugged off her departure, and had taken on the extra work in expiation for his bad behavior. It would probably take him months and another Steinbeck novel to hire on the next deputy. By the time he got to it, it might be _The Old Man and the Sea._ More surprising was that Ferg still thought she might come back, evidently part of a Walt pipedream.

"He seems to have gotten over that angry phase we were all familiar with the last few months. He's being… _nice._ " Ferg's tone alerted her.

Her lips bunched, she could imagine why. If she was what he'd wanted as he claimed, his actions had sure said the opposite and driven her away. Given that, he might have realized he needed to reform a little for the remaining deputies' sakes. It sounded like he'd begun that plan.

"Good. You guys don't deserve that outrage shit. I think he was just really, really angry at me. Not at you, just me."

"The reason I'm calling, Vic, he's talking about putting Eamonn in charge for a few months, who's got the most experience of all of us still here. Walt even _apologized_ to him for sending him back to Cumberland County, before."

She keyed in on specific words. "For a few _months_?" Her brows crinkled. "What for?" And then, finally heard the least believable event. "He _apologized_? To _Eamonn_?"

"Walt says he needs some time off, too."

She thought of her instant gut reaction to his expression at the Santa gig…about eating his gun…and didn't like the sound of that at all. An idle Walt, a _thinking_ Walt, was Walt at his most dangerous…to himself.

"Oh."

"I was wondering, maybe you could come visit and talk him out of that?"

"Me? I'm the last person he wants to see. I rained on his fucking pity parade." And she had been raining on everyone else's since she got back to Philly. She really had to try and be more personable, if only for her family's sake.

"Just think about it, Vic. Nice Walt scares me more than Grieving Walt or Grumpy Walt."

That scared her, too, but…an evening of drinking with her brothers and their friends beckoned. Maybe it would let her forget…some of it, at least. She only wanted to stay sober enough to fend off the inevitable advances. All she could come up with was, "I'll think about it."

Twelve hours later, waking with a pounding head that was _not_ Walt at the door, she realized how empty and frozen she still was inside. She had left something behind in Durant, something she hoped to need again someday, and she was terribly afraid it was her heart.


	3. Chapter 3

**Holiday from her Holiday**

 **Chapter 3**

 _ **A/N: This is has been percolating and stuck in a file for a few weeks, now. I'm letting it out, so Merry Christmas!**_

XXX

The mid-January plane ride into Billings was choppy. She had heard it was, of course, going to snow that night, in the endless rounds of blizzarding that defined winter in Wyoming. She wondered if she should consider this a post-holiday holiday away from her holiday, which could be summarized as Too Much Philly punctuated by a guy who wouldn't hear the word "no" and now wore sore testicles. In her mind, it was an old refrain to a tired song.

Ferg pulled up to the sliding doors in her former Absaroka County truck.

"Wow, nice ride!" She smiled at him and meant it. The familiar face, the familiar truck, gave her a pang.

He grinned ear-to-ear. "The new perk, Eamonn is senior in experience and may get it eventually, but if you agree to come back, I'll surrender it in a minute."

"Awwww…" She hugged him briefly. A few weeks of deflecting guys who knew she was recently divorced, presumably horny and on the market again, had grown tiresome. Being without work had left her…restless. As Ferg put the big pickup into gear, she asked, "So, spill, what's the real deal that you felt panicked enough to text: HELP?"

"Walt's on personal sabbatical, Eamonn's in charge. I like him fine, and Zach's doing well with him, too, but we could use Walt's guidance on a big case, and we're both concerned about his whereabouts. None of us has seen him in the last week, and Ruby says that he wasn't there when she went out to the cabin to check on him yesterday. You know if Ruby's worried that it's unusual for him. Henry says he's been camping a lot—"

"In fucking _January_?"

"—and having beer delivered by the pallet, not the case."

"Shit. He'll pass out in a snowdrift or fall off his horse and freeze to death, destroy his liver first, or _something_. So here's the thing, Ferg. You think he's just pulling these stunts so I'll come back and rescue him, or at least talk to him, or has he just gone off the deep end like we expected him to after Barlow and the Donna dump?"

"Nobody knows. He won't talk to any of _us,_ even Henry seems concerned. He said the only time he's heard from Walt since you left was to ask him to watch after Horse."

"Hmmmph. It sounds like he's reverted to some kind of shrinky-dink lingo passive-aggressive rebellion thing?"

"I don't know. We're deep into high-stakes corruption —in the middle of a casino money-laundering investigation – remember that guy Oscar Ernesto a few years back?"

"Yeah, um, his alias was Ray, borrowed a corpse to fake his death and burned up his own horses, I remember _that_.Burned horse _s_ hit-storm _._ "

"Well, before he was killed, he said someone called Landetta had been trying to cut a deal with the casino even way back then…"

"Yeah, I vaguely remember that."

"…Well, Landetta was sighted here a few weeks back, squiring around one of the bosses, Tony Patriarca."

" _Shit!_ Even I've heard of that name—Boston, right?"

"Right."

"That is big stuff if the Patriarcas are visiting Durant—Walt needs to be in on that."

"I _know!_ "

"Malachi _has_ to be involved in something that big, if not Jacob!"

"I _know_!"

"Oh." She stopped. "So, that's why I'm out here? To convince Walt to come back and personally supervise re-catching Malachi in the act and hopefully eradicate The Mob from Absaroka County?"

"I don't know. When you got off the plane, I wanted to say, _Y_ o _u're our only hope, Obi-Wan,_ but it sounded way too corny."

"I figured you were desperate when the county offered to pay my plane fare. Was that courtesy of Eamonn?"

"Yep. He wants to see you, too. He said you two have unfinished business. And of course the county would spring for the plane fare, to get Walt back. We're kind of lacking seniority around there since you've been gone."

She shrugged. She and Eamonn might have unfinished business, but she was pretty sure it was not offering a renewal of affection. She'd learned from that. The heart wants what the heart wants. Her own happened to be in cryo, awaiting resuscitation.

"So you want me to locate Walt and convince him to come back?"

"Um, well…"

"Shit, Ferg. He probably won't even see me, just shoot first. He's probably even angrier with me than before, if possible."

"I don't know about that. He wouldn't discuss it, though."

"That's what I mean. He hasn't said anything to me. I'm _persona non gratis_ with him." She felt slightly guilty saying that, yes, there had been a number of calls, but from the ASD number, and she hadn't listened or kept the messages. He _could_ have called. More, he _could_ have come after her, if he really cared, and make the larger statement than _things hadn't changed._

"I don't think so, Vic, I think he misses you."

She swallowed and her head went down. "Then, double-shit." She couldn't keep a tremor out of her voice.

"Maybe. Where do you want to go first?"

She exhaled. "The station, of course, so you guys can fill me in, before the cabin."

"Gotcha."

They sped through the flurries, which had already started. At any other time, she'd think it was a winter wonderland since she wouldn't have to stand out in it for hours looking for an escaped trailer of stinking sheep…but the thought of Walt out in it alone made her paralyzed with worry, and she chided herself for that. She could tell herself a million times that it was no longer her problem, and his words pumped through her in remote litany. _The exact nature of my relationship is none of your business,_ but the truth of that, _her_ truth—stripped bare—said that it _was_.

XXX

Ruby hugged her, Eammon shook her hand heartily, escorted her to what she thought of as Walt's office, but was now his own. Ferg and Zach followed. Over the next couple of hours, as a blizzard moved toward Durant, they proceeded to fill her in on the last month.

Ruby brought her coffee the way she liked it and squeezed her shoulder. Ferg looked at her gratefully more than once. When the meeting broke up, Eamonn asked her to stay back a minute.

"I've hoped you've forgiven me," he began.

"Forgive _you_? There's nothing to forgive you for, you told me nothing but the fucking truth. I appreciated that in a season of lies, Eamonn, you don't know how much."

He grinned, a little sheepishly. "D'you know, I've been seeing my former groupie Maddie, lately? She's really a nice person."

Something inside her thawed, that things were going well for somebody's relationship. "That's really sweet, Eamonn, hope you're very happy."

"Well, we'll see, it's early days, yet, but after a few dates with her, I suddenly _knew_ …I see the same thing, whenever I see you with Walt. I have to believe this whole shift for him happened because you left. I'm thinking you leaving may have undermined his whole existence. He depended on you, your presence to keep him righted. Ferg and Ruby have said that Martha did that for him when she was alive, why he's struggled so much since then. And I saw it, that after you left, he just sort of crumpled into himself."

She thought most recently of the Santa suit, but of all the times since the Grant Parkford shooting when they'd been together and actually becoming friends between solving cases. She pressed her lips together and looked with concern out the window as the storm intensified, remembering him alone above Tensleep chasing escaped cons, and how her heart had contracted over his well-being enough to punch an FBI agent, that same heart which was currently MIA.

"I hope I don't have that effect, if just leaving sent him into Russian roulette with blizzards."

"Thanks for coming back when we needed you, Vic."

She threw him a sharp look. "I'm not working here again, y'know. I'm just here to talk to him."

He laughed gently. "Okay, I can live with that. Just see what you can do, convince him ASD still needs him. I think he feels unwanted and unneeded."

 _Welcome to the club_.

XXX

The cabin was dark and cold, and she wondered if Horse were okay. She remembered how Walt had shown her how to make a fire in the big fireplace during the evening before Lizzie'd appeared, and where everything was. Back then she'd felt the attraction, but there had also been the equally understood convictions of fidelity, and an innocence of sorts between them.

Her arms were full of sacks of groceries, adequate supplies to combat the pallets of beer, if those were to be believed.

Ferg went in before her. "I'll take lead on this." She liked this developing deputy Assertive Ferg side of him, although she thought maybe he was casing the joint hoping against hope to find Walt just lying dead drunk inside, or much worse, Walt actually _dead_ inside, so she wouldn't be the one to find him. It was a twisty, slightly macabre, but affectionate thing for him to do. She blinked back tears.

No one lived or died inside. Instead, it was almost tidy except for a huge trash can full of beer cans out back. A couple of cases of beer-at-the-ready sat inside near the back door.

She stood in the kichen, bundled up in her parka and Sorels, and her mouth twisted. Everything looked all right, but something was wrong. For one thing, Walt wasn't there wintering.

"What do you think, Ferg? I think something's fucked."

"Yeah. All the years I've known him living here, he's never spent much time away from the cabin in the winter. Of course, for a while, he stayed really close because of Martha, and then, afterward, mourning Martha, but this…this looks almost _abandoned_."

"Yeah, I get the same vibe. Can you check on Horse while I put the groceries away and start the fire?"

"On it," Ferg said and trudged off in the snow to the shed which passed for a barn.

She quickly unpacked the bags, got a blazing fire going and checked the fuel status. The back porch was full of firewood. Stocked then, but…for what? The bed was made, as though freshly so, the sheets smelled of detergent and clean, not used. As though he planned for someone to use them—or for his return. If he were on sabbatical, he wasn't sleeping at the station most nights like after he returned from Barlow, so where had he been going, or had he been spending his nights on the couch?

The groceries were a good guess, he typically kept very little there to go bad—but there were a few left in the fridge, with expirations good for a while. Not put in there long ago, then. Still, good to stock him up, assuming he was coming back.

She made cocoa, simple and fast, and had it ready before anyone returned. Optimistically, she put three mugs out. Who knew, maybe he had just been out camping with Horse?

Her heart raced as the front door creaked open, but it was only the Ferg, who looked a little sheepish. "Horse looks fine, a truck's been down there, but not the Bronco. Oh!" He must have seen her stricken face. "Guess I should have announced myself, huh."

"No…but it's weird here, Ferg. Like he went out for a walk, not for a week."

'Yeah."

"Let's have some cocoa in front of the fire and figure out the next step."

"Okay, it's awful out there, anyway. With the wind increasing and temps dropping, we'll probably be snowed in by tomorrow if we stay here."

"Right. Let me think. Where would he go?"

"Well…he likes to fish."

"In _this_ weather? Maybe ice-fishing?"

Ferg shook his head. "Nope, that would be Lake DeSmet, but I don't think so. I've never heard of him ice-fishing."

The fire crackled and it was very companionable with the cocoa, but she knew with every fiber inside her that she sat there in that cabin with the wrong man.

"Are there any cabins he could shelter in if he were camping?"

"Not…cabins per se, but there are a couple of sheepherder huts…"

"You mean like the little places that family had while they were pasturing near there?"

"Yeah, yeah…but those are kinda far out."

She made a decision. "The rest of my winter gear is in the back of the truck. Let's get packs together and go find him."

Ferg looked startled. "Where?"

"Well, the Bronco's not here, so let's assume he must have taken it to a trail head. We find the Bronco, we find him."

"Okay," said Ferg with more enthusiasm than she'd heard since she'd left Durant weeks ago.

"But we go armed," she said. "Walt would have come back here if he wasn't hurt…or kept back…by someone. Also, his Winchester and Colt are both gone."

"Okay," said Ferg again, with the program. She used the bathroom while he brought her duffle in and she layered up in thermal layers and heated socks for the conditions in Walt's room while Ferg sat by the fire on his phone.

"You think he's hurt?" Ferg asked as she put basic first aid supplies into her pack. Ferg's carried freeze-dried food and space blankets. They both carried matches and bottles of water.

She shook her head. "I have no idea. I just want to be prepared. You know this area a lot better than I do, so I'll follow you."

"There are a lot of trailheads on 16, but that's on up the mountain, and going will be treacherous in this storm."

"He had the Bronco up there during the Wayne Durell thing, at least we're better prepared than he was then."

"Horses or ATVs would be better…"

She might agree if they knew where the needle in the haystack was hiding in all of Wyoming. Instead she said, "Let's see if we can locate the Bronco and go from there."

"Okay."

"I'll have Ruby put an APB out for it, just in case somebody saw him coming or going."

"Good idea."

She banked the fire and shut the door securely behind her. For the first time in her life, she hoped that would not be the last time she ever visited his place.


	4. Chapter 4

**Holiday from her Holiday**

 **Chapter 4**

 _ **A/N: One more chapter tonight, before I spend some quality Christmas Eve with family.**_

"Paydirt on the APB," Ferg said, looking up from his cell on a private with Ruby. They had agreed to keep a possible Missing Sheriff off the radio.

"Fuck! It worked?" An amazing thing, to find that needle…

They were in his-her truck, she was driving to all the trailheads in nearby radius. The snow had intensified and the wipers were busy. He listened and then hung up.

"Someone reported it to Ruby from the Red Pine Campground. They were returning home from a fishing trip this morning, but saw it sitting there covered in snow when they arrived to fish and cold camp last night. They were surprised to see it still there when they got back from this morning."

"This morning. Covered. So he was probably there at least overnight."

It was less than half an hour away from the cabin, but the opposite direction from their search. When they pulled up, there it was—the Bronco, still covered in snow. She had a sudden pang that she was so close and yet so far, and then an inspiration.

"Call Henry, see if Walt asked him to feed Horse, and for how long. Even if he intended to spend some time away, he wouldn't leave her unattended for long."

"Good idea." He pulled out his cell. A few minutes later, "Henry fed Horse last night, but said that Walt had thought he'd be back this morning."

She took a deep breath. "Okay, it's early-afternoon and no Walt, so I vote we go in. You think you can track him despite the snowfall?"

Ferg jerked his head. "I think so, I've been working with Henry for a while, all that started with finding the cult baby."

"Yeah, that is a definite talent out here in the wilderness, Ferg. We have all learned to appreciate it, especially Walt." She said it as an accolade, without sarcasm. She had felt all along, and too often, that Walt did not let his deputies know how much those singular talents meant to the department.

She looked toward the snowed-over trail, nodded, made her decision and returned the keys under the visor. "I think we should leave a note saying that we've been here and gone looking for him, in case he comes in from an unexpected direction."

She realized she was being optimistic.

"At least he'll know we're out there and looking for him, and he won't shoot at us by mistake. We don't know if he's hunting something or some _one_ —"

"Or at all," Ferg observed.

"Or at all." She began scribbling the note on his duty pad, leaving it pretty vague on purpose, in case the wrong person found it. She didn't want to think what _the wrong person_ might entail, but she left the note propped prominently on the clipboard on his steering column.

"Okay, let's go." She yanked her parka out of his/her truck and they began to assemble their packs.

"I'll take first aid, food, extra batteries and some ammo. You take the sleeping bag, we can alternate if we find him and need it. We both have fire-making stuff and water bottles."

"You really think we'll find him?"

She had to be honest. "I don't know, but it's a start, and he told me once, if he were a hostage, he'd want to know someone was coming to help. I think that also applies to lost, hurt, or whatever." She did not want to think about _whatever._

"Sounds like him," agreed Ferg. "So let me see if I can pick up the tracks." He hoisted his pack to his back and began to walk back and forth from the truck. In a couple of minutes he announced, "Found 'em, faint, almost filled in, but still there. Let's see if we can follow these."

"You're sure those are his? After I said that, I was thinking he might be a hostage, anybody with him?"

Ferg looked up. Although they're filling fast, one set of prints, big ropers, big stride, coming from the Bronco. I think they're _his._ Looks like he's alone _._ "

Possible scenarios where he might not return popped up. "Then he maybe got hurt, someone ambushed him, or he's hunting someone…?"

Ferg looked up from the trail he was following up into the trees. "Or he found someone?"

She nodded quickly and plunged up the hillside after Ferg.

She was already cold and missed the comparative warmth of the truck. The whirling snow blinded her eyes, and she kept the comforting solid bulk of Ferg ahead of her as he sought for traces of Walt's passing.

XXX

It seemed like a long slog, but in only a quarter mile by her pedometer, maybe a little less, they came to a clearing.

"Something happened here." Ferg was studying the prints. "Running steps…looks like he may have taken cover in the trees over here…" He looked up the other way and she instinctively followed, looking for the glint of metal, colors, anything which might betray the identity of a shooter.

"Vic! Here! It's _blood._ "

Her heart chilled far colder than the rest of her at his words. She had gone to Philly with that protective frost over her heart, and left him to Donna and whatever festered out here. Now someone had hurt him, and she hadn't been there for him. Heaven help the shooter if she found him—or her—first.

Well, she was here, now. She began figuring trajectories in her head.

"It's not a lot, here, Vic, but there are spots of it." He pointed for her to examine the tiny splotches.

"Just a sec. If I were a shooter," she said, thinking as she spoke, "I would set up over _there._ " She pointed with certainty. "I know, in the horror movies they say _don't split up,_ but here, I think you track the shooter, I'll go after Walt."

"What if I _find_ the shooter?"

"Get to a safe place and radio me. _Don't_ engage. Got that, Ferg?"

"Got it. Let me know if you find Walt, okay?"

"Roger that. Hopefully you can still find the other tracks. Let me know what kind, how many, etc."

Ferg stared at her.

"Might be more than one, who knows," she muttered. "Wouldn't be surprised at anything, he's had too many people after him the last couple of years, and before that, after Martha. Just remember, _don't engage._ Stay hidden. Let's head out."

Ferg nodded and headed to the other side of the clearing. She hoped to God they were not currently targets, and began to follow the tracks, one foot dragging and deeper than the other, headed into the woods.

The tracks began to go up. _Of course, Walt, you go up so you can see your attacker before he can get to you._ She wondered when she'd started thinking like him, and hoped Ferg was safe.

She found broken twigs, the steps dragging more, now. _Shit_ he must be hurt, not just winged or something, if he wasn't being more careful in his passing. She yanked her phone out, but of course, no bars.

And then the tracks stopped. She stopped, looked up. There was a ledge just above her vision or reach. She remembered Hector, shot, bloody and scalped, _dying_ in a cave above a similar area and her heart sank.

"Walt?" she called softly. She heard gravel crunch, a few tiny pieces dislodging, and then, like a miracle bestowed from above, his craggy face peering over, a little white, but very alive.

"Vic." His voice sounded pleased, yet rusty from dis-use. Then, with less belief, "Vic?"

"Yeah, surprise, surprise. Needed a holiday from my holiday. Out here for the fucking beaches, of course. How bad are you hit?" She tried to keep her voice from breaking.

"Not so bad, but I lost some blood getting up here."

"Yeah, noticed. That's how I found you, trail of corpuscles."

"I hope you're not alone?"

"Ferg's tracking the shooter, but don't panic, I told him not to engage, and to radio in when he finds him. I need to tell him I found _you_ , but how do I get up there?" She wasn't going to radio Ferg until she assessed Walt. She wanted _all_ of them to walk out of there. "We need to radio or call for backup, but my phone is bar-less."

"I'll give you an arm up," he said, and she recoiled.

"Oh, no, hurt like you are. Where are you hit?"

"My side, but I'll use my other arm."

"Oh, I'm sure that will fucking help." She hoped the sarcasm threaded through. "I think Ferg has the rope, or I'd just have you tie it to something."

She heard a grunt, then another. His arm extended down.

"C'mon, let's get you up here, out of his sights, if he's anywhere near."

She hesitated only a minute, but only used his arm for leverage, and her body strength to quickly scrabble up and over the edge.

"Shit, Walt," was all she could say. He leaned back against a wall leading to an overhang. He held one arm out. She went closer, a little wary, but he reeled her in for a hug. His head bent to hers, and she would swear his eyes were bright with unshed tears. Or maybe it was just the stinging snow.

"I can't believe it's you." His voice was hoarse.

She hoped the hug had not been to his bad side. "Let me see how bad."

She waited for permission. He grunted to his feet, undid his coat and began to reveal layers, a bulky bandanna wedged against his side under some impressive thermals she didn't know he owned, saturated, but drying. He had obviously lost some blood, but the quantity had diminished to a sluggish bleed. The cold might even have saved him.

"I've been applying pressure."

"Well, sit down before you fall down."

He did. She nodded without replying. Fortunately, the shot seemed to have just taken a narrow strip out of his side and still trickled, but the bullet appeared to have passed through both the front and back of his heavy coat.

It looked messy, ugly, but hopefully not too serious. When they did the forensics, they might find it somewhere in the snow if they looked hard enough. Right now, she was more interested in helping him with getting the wound staunched and stabilized than anything else.

Her radio suddenly crackled as she worked.

"Go to D." Ferg's voice.

Walt plucked the radio from her belt and she knew he was going to their designated frequency.

"Ferg, this is Walt."

"Oh, Walt." Ferg's voice sounded overwhelmed. "You don't know how glad—"

"Switch and report, Ferg." In their code, they always added three letters to whatever one was specified. It wouldn't work forever, but for a few bursts. In the next transmission, they would add two. The rotating channels would limit anyone finding them through quick transmissions.

It had become their SOP since the David Ridges debacle to change channels during a conversation in case any civilians or in worst case, the suspects, had access to radios. None of them had forgotten the open radio transmissions Branch had monitored when Walt had been headed out to confront Ridges.

A moment later, after switching to D, "I found him. It's a him. You had him on your wall a while back. Bald guy. Oh, and he's bleeding, too. Don't know how bad."

Walt gasped as she shifted and applied pressure elsewhere.

"My wall."

"In your office. Switch, Walt."

Walt switched and Ferg's voice reappeared out of the ether. "The guy you and Lucian went out to see…"

She caught Walt's gaze and her mouth worked. "Stanley Keene? That guy? The picture on the wall near Chance Gilbert's?"

Walt said "Stand by and switch B on my order." That would decrease the frequency switch to two channels up.

He nodded. "He shouldn't be out of prison, much less out _here—_ 25 to life, mental health, no early parole."

"Speaking of out…why are we _here_ , Walt, and you're not taking in this fucking winter wonderland snowstorm from the safety of your cabin?"

"Don Chiles called me last night at the cabin he'd seen a guy with a long gun out here. No one should be hunting at this time of year out in this. I thought I'd investigate, maybe get back this morning…"

"So you went without backup. Ruby was worried."

He looked abashed. "I should have alerted her to where I'd be."

"Why would _Stanley Keene_ , of all people, be out here and not somewhere far, far away?"

"I don't know." He seemed to be deep in thought. He picked up the radio again.

"Okay, switch. What's your 20?"

Maybe a half mile south of the crime scene…I mean, the shooting."

"It's a crime scene all right." Shooting a sheriff still is, last I heard, although there are more than a few who seem to be taking pot-shots, lately."

She wondered if he were ruefully referring to the home invasion while he and Donna had been…well, there was no other way to say it, _intending to fuck._ She had kept hoping even after she had retreated to Philly that, paraphrasing Tina Turner, love had nothing to do with _that_. She wasn't sure if had finally ever happened between them, and almost didn't want to know.

The radio crackled again. "Switch." Walt switched it over.

"He's going up, Walt."

"Up. They always go up," she muttered darkly. She had not forgotten the Tensleep fiasco, not by a longshot.

Walt looked pointedly over to her. He began issuing orders on the radio. "Stand down, stay out of sight, and wait for us. Stay off the radio unless an emergency."

"Okay…"

"You can't be thinking about going after him." It was not a question. It was disbelief.

He looked at her. Pain darkened his eyes, etched his face.

"It's not even the worst part of the job, but it is the job."

She rolled her eyes, and he unexpectedly laughed.

"It's good to see you, too, Vic," and the voice was totally different. His hand found hers, squeezed it through her gloves, then dropped it again.

"That must have been the shock talking. Let's go take that ass-hat down."

"Let's see if we can find you a signal at the top of that ridge."

"Maybe. We're not that far from town."

"We need to let Ruby know we're okay."

"Well, I wouldn't go that far…backup and a ride for you to DM would be great."

"Keene first."

"We have my—Ferg's truck, it's closer, we can get to the Bronco using it."

He hesitated, then nodded firmly. "Let's go."

XXX

She knew he hurt. Fuck, _she_ hurt…it was slow-going and she thought the ATV, horses, or even the snowshoes Walt liked for some obscure reason would have been preferable to the climb.

They got to the ridge mid-afternoon, weak sun filtering through the snow, making it a fairyland if a body weren't slogging through it after a piece of scum. The sun would go down in an hour or so mid-winter and the temperatures plummet.

She checked her bars at the top of the ridge—two.

Ruby's voice answered, but turned to steel after Vic gave her précis. She handed the phone to Walt and he began to report. "Ruby, Vic is with me, Ferg is scouting, but we could use some backup. Here's our location."

He handed the phone to her and she used the app on her phone to send a GPS ping.

"I think we'll be within a half-mile south of this if we can pin down our shooter. We need to get Walt some medical attention, too." He turned and tried to grab for the phone, but she was faster, and spun away.

Eamonn's voice cut in.

"Vic, are you guys all right? Ruby says _no._ "

"Walt's hurt—" He tried to grab the phone from her, again and she spun away "—but not too bad. Just backup, please."

"On our way."

She thrust the phone back in her pocket, jaw working.

"Carry your own," she said, keeping her voice light, "and you can add another lie to your arsenal."

"I just didn't want to worry Ruby any more than necessary."

"Too late for that. She probably has a cavalry with a chopper headed out here by now."

Walt only grunted and began to trudge ahead, the limp belying that old injury he would never admit. If he hadn't been hurt already, she would have punched him. As it was, she saved energy and tried to project hers to him. She hoped it wasn't far.


	5. Chapter 5

**Holiday from her Holiday**

 **Chapter 5**

With Walt half-leaning on her and using his rifle as a walking stick, they trudged upward and found Ferg mid-afternoon, crouching in the snow in a stand of trees above a small, bowl-shaped meadow sheltered by the hill to its north where he lay concealed. Ferg had Keene under surveillance. The other side of the meadow was the much lower end of the bowl, surrounded by trees and brush.

Vic stopped with relief, but not nearly as much as Walt betrayed with his stance and breathing, leaning heavily against a rock. He was winded by either the climb, blood loss, or both. His pallor worried her as much as his breathing.

"Sit, we can take it from here." Although she whispered it, she wondered if he heard her as though she had barked it out, for he slid down the tree to do just that.

"Ferg, report." It sounded like he was using the last of his breath.

Ferg gave a concise précis. "Keene hasn't moved since he stopped this time. He might be worse hurt than you."

Walt merely grunted. In her opinion, Walt was hurting plenty, he just wouldn't admit it. She suspected it was because that might get back to Ruby or Cady and they'd give him more than grief, or something along those lines.

The radio crackled.

"Where are you guys?" Eamonn.

"I'll ping you." She did, and within a few minutes Eamonn and Zach scrabbled in behind them.

With Ferg's binocs, she could clearly see the guy, who had a hoodie and parka on.

She turned to where Ferg crouched behind her. "How'd you figure out it was Keene?"

"He had the hoodie down earlier, while he was walking, and I could see him. I remembered his face from the wall." Again, Ferg impressed. If she had only remembered Chance Gilbert's name and face from Walt's wall, she would never have—willingly—walked into his house.

"Good recog, Ferg," she said automatically, and found Walt studying her.

He seemed to have found his breath again, and began to speak, but his eyes were still on her. "When we take him into custody, remember he is cunning, and probably has three or four cuff keys on his person. He's escaped me before," admitted Walt finally. "Probably also has a variety of weapons on him. Shivs, box-cutters, the like. As far as I know, he's fresh from lockup. He will try and manipulate you, use you against one another. He's a master at pitting people against one another."

She wondered if he had personal experience with _that_ aspect as well.

"Cavity search, too?"

"No, test his hands for powder, but he was wearing gloves, we may not get anything. Zip ties and duct tape over the cuffs might be appropriate in this instance, and on his feet. Shackle him. We shouldn't take him to the station even for a stop, he should go straight to Tri-County for immediate admission, although I'd prefer Rawlins. If he's somehow out legally, Rawlins might not take him, but Tri-County will hold him just for shooting at me. All three of you, two sets of eyes on him at all times."

"Your word against his?" Vic asked. She was listening to him breathe through the pain. She was feeling it, too, in some kind of weird empathy, or maybe it was just the altitude and her inadequate Philly physique in spite of her comparative youth.

Walt shrugged, but winced as though the shrug brought fresh pain. "It's been good enough, before. There is also evidence despite the snow, and the ballistics should prove out my word. After Keene is secured at Tri-County, Zach, you come out and do the forensics, including ballistics. Ferg can assist you if necessary."

He took a shaky shallow breath, as though a deep one might be uncomfortable.

"Vic, Ferg, go around to the other side. We'll go in from this side. Either way, we'll surround him. Remember, he is armed and very dangerous." He looked at her. "Is your phone on vibrate? Eamonn can signal you with it to go in on my count."

"Unless he's already dead," said Ferg.

"I don't believe that. Not for a minute. He's too mean to die." Walt's voice was a low rasp now. It must be the earlier blood loss. She had this feeling it was now or never for him to participate in this one.

"Let's go, Ferg." She began to withdraw so they could go around behind the ridge together the long way.

The snow seemed to take a break, and a weak, later-afternoon shaft of sun tried to force its way through the cloud cover.

She and Ferg tried to be silent, and she tried to remember all the things Walt had taught her about stealth over the last few years. Ferg obviously knew them, too. They descended the ridge without a word, although she pointed here and there as they made their way around boulders and trees, and slunk into a concealed point of observation just to the south of their target.

In a few minutes, her phone began to vibrate.

With a bit-off curse, she drew off her glove and refused the call. It was her _mother_ , of all people. Probably wondering if she were still alive, or enjoying her vacation. It was not the first time that week she had cursed Lena Moretti, and probably not the last. She loved her mother, but they were both too strong-willed to stay in the same room together for long.

Almost immediately after, she received another vibration. Eamonn. She nodded to Ferg and they made the final descent.

Closer to Keene than those approaching from the other direction, she saw the long gun rise up to Walt's approaching chest. She knew Walt didn't have his ballistics vest on. She didn't hesitate, but squeezed the trigger once, and Keene's arm dropped, the gun spinning away. She had gotten his torso, but probably hadn't killed him.

She and Ferg trotted in the rest of the way and multi-cuffed Keene before starting to apply pressure to his wounds and search him. Zach and Eamonn arrived first, Walt huffing behind them.

Walt stopped and leaned over, hands on knees to regain his breath.

Keene finally spoke up sweetly as the deputies were searching him. "Why, Walt, I thought I got you the first time."

Walt inhaled deeply and she could see the pain in his face from it, so she went to her normal take charge securing suspect in-charge thing without thinking.

"Search all layers for weapons," she ordered Ferg, and Zach and Eamonn held him while they did a thorough search, removing his coat, sweatshirt and gloves. "Search the asshole for _anything,_ " she added. "Mirandize him, Ferg, but use Walt's precautions." She stopped, knowing she had _no authority_ to issue orders to anyone, but they did it without hesitation or questioning.

"I'm taking Walt back to my—Ferg's—truck, and he and I will switch to the Bronco, and on to DM. Ferg's truck will be where the Bronco is now, maybe a mile further down the road from where the truck is now, and one of you can pick it up later, after you deliver Keene to Tri-County. She looked to Eamonn. If that's okay with you, Acting Sheriff 'O'Neil."

She saw Walt's eyes narrow at her words, then drop away. "Vic—" Walt rasped. Message received. She took his good arm and let him lean on her. It was as though he was unwilling to go down with Keene's eyes, or possibly even the other deputies' eyes, on him.

"Let's get you out of here." She turned to the others. "Remember the multiple cuff keys and other things we don't even think of. Two pairs of eyes on him at _all times._ "

Walt resisted her arm and turned back toward Keene. "Stanley, why did you come out here of all places?"

"Why,Walt." Keene's voice was oily-sweet, and thready, probably due to blood loss. "Because it's _your_ county, of course, and I knew it would be you who came." He chuckled and it made her blood run cold. "You should have told me your pretty little deputy has a thing for me."

She was in front of Walt before he could swing, impaired as he was by his side, her hand on his forearm. His eyes caught hers, dropped, and she relaxed a little and watched Zach taking swabs from Keene's hands before duct-taping them. With any luck, his lethal hands would freeze and fall off.

Without thinking she added, "Zach, do his mouth, too. It's obviously poisonous."

Zach only hesitated long enough to look at Walt. "It's not prisoner protocol…"

Walt's look obviously seconded her words. He suggested, "If they give you any civil rights guff, point out that he just shot a sheriff. Stanley has a long history of manipulation." He seemed to falter a little.

"C'mon, Walt, let's get you back to the truck before we have to fight the fucking dark."

"Deputy, tsk, tsk, your mou—"

She nodded as the tape was applied. "Double fuckin' right."

She refocused on Walt. She could feel him leaning heavily on her as they slowly made their way from the clearing.

"Do you need any help with Walt?" called Eamonn after them.

To her surprise, Walt answered, turning back for a moment. "No. I'll be fine. Don't take your eyes off him—eyes on him the entire trip. Not to the bathroom, not any time. Get to Tri-County and don't give into any requests. Let him piss himself if he has to."

"Mmmmpphphh," protested the oily voice behind the duct tape.

They were out of the clearing before Walt grabbed at her shoulder and sank a little.

"Stop. For a minute." He leaned heavily against a tree.

"Okay."

"Thanks."

"What could I do but come? After all, Ferg texted _HELP_."

"No, I mean back there, shooting him before he finished me off, and then stopping me. I would probably have killed him, if I could after he mouthed off about you. I told Lucian sometimes we create more evil than we stop. Something, _somebody_ has to stop it."

"You didn't create that wackadoodle."

"I did my part."

"Well, then I did, too. He's not going to like me very much after two or three hours before processing at Tri-County wearing that duct tape."

"He stalked a woman for months, killed her, and spread her body parts across three counties. He thought the woman _had a thing for him._ "

She wasn't winded, but she huffed out. " _Shit._ Now I'm thinking I didn't do enough."

"Yeah."

"Rested long enough? We need to keep moving before the temps drop again." _Or you become unable to move any more. Or it gets dark on us. Or it starts snowing again._

The snow seemed to pick up in response to her thoughts.

"Shit." She at least had to let the weather know her opinion on that.

No more than a mile away, it still seemed an eternity back to what had been her truck, and sunset passed into descending darkness before they arrived to warm it and themselves enough to drive to the Bronco. They drove down the road a mile, transferred to the Bronco, warmed it as well, and were leaving as the trio of deputies escorting Keene arrived. She waved to them as she and Walt pulled out and onto the road, and slid her window down.

"You're fucking welcome for the warm truck!"

She insisted on driving, and wrapped the dead-guy blanket around and to pad Walt from where he leaned against the door without protest the whole way back. As she watched him, his eyes closed and mouth tightened in pain at each bump.

Sometime during the drive to Durant Memorial in an unguarded, unexpected moment, whatever had gone into cryo inside her suddenly thawed and overpowered her. From one moment to the next, she realized and knew she still loved him. Her stomach dropped in a pang of despair. It hadn't gone away, and she couldn't just deny it anymore. It was truth, at least _her_ truth. What Walt's truth was had yet to be revealed.

She couldn't go, and she couldn't stay and take more of what had been heaped on her since Chance Gilbert's swan song, but she neither could she pretend to remain unaffected.

 _Shit._


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter Four**

 _ **A/N: Please note holiday connection,"Gift of the Magi" mentioned in this chapter. It is a tale of irony and wit from O. Henry, a master of the short story.**_

 _ **So, it's more of "the other crap people came up with trying to explain the unexplainable," but I hope it's entertaining crap…Vickrok is right about the crowded corner, but what great folks to be huddling with until we get more canon to mess about with.**_

 _ **Thanks for reading, PLEASE review! Feels like my hat in hand, saying, 'will write for reviews.' Actually, I've been writing up a storm on…a storm. Haha. Les and Hannah are as well as their problems will allow. They will appear soon in a chapter of Survival (surprise!)**_

After being rushed to an exam room and examined, Walt looked pretty good, considering he'd been shot and in freezing conditions for over twenty-four hours. His damp and bloody clothes had been removed, and he was draped in blankets.

They'd made it to the hospital a little more than half an hour after transferring to the Bronco. In spite of his protest, they headed straight to Durant Memorial with lights and sirens on. Unlike her typical all-in style of driving, she had kept to the more moderate speed due to conditions and still un-plowed roads.

Dr. Weston was on call and made noises about keeping Walt overnight. She wanted to say, g _ood luck with that,_ although she didn't, and the good doctor patched him up, anyway. To her laywoman's eyes, it was a long set of double sutures maybe half an inch wide, but from a few inches above his beltline and going five inches toward his back. Although numbed, it did not look fun.

Unlike the time Dr. Weston had sewed up his shoulder, this time she stood there and held his hand. She hoped that didn't violate their medical sensibilities or proprieties, and Walt submitted dutifully without a word. She could feel his eyes on her most of the procedure, though. Maybe she helped him focus through it.

"If you're going to refuse our offer of accommodations, you at least need someone to stay with you a couple of days, help you with the wound until you are more comfortable, make sure you take the antibiotics, and the pain meds correctly."

Haha, Dr. Weston didn't add, _to keep you from drinking yourself into a stupor and doubling up on the meds._

Walt looked over at her in question, from where he sat on the exam table, his stoicism in full swing.

She returned with her own raised eyebrow look. "You got your choice, Walt—Ferg, Zach or Eamonn. I'm flying back." She had figured it on the way back in the Bronco after realizing her tumble, she couldn't stay now. Maybe sometime in the future, but not now. She was too churned up, too vulnerable.

"Nothing's flying out of Sheridan, Billings or Denver, Vic."

Without a word, she handed him the clean clothing she'd procured from his Bronco go-bag, and tactfully turned her back to leave and go look for flights on her phone.

"Stay," he said softly from behind her, not a command, but a request, and she sighed, but did not turn around.

She ignored the rustling and grunting behind her, until he said very quietly, "Vic…" she turned, he had his boxers and jeans on, but when he tried to put on the shirt, he couldn't get his left arm in, so she helped him. It was a snap-shirt, and she began to do them up, but he pushed her hands away with his right arm.

"I can do that part," he grumbled.

 _Oh, grumpy-pants! Not hurting, my foot!_

She went ahead and snapped his sleeves.

"There, you can fucking do the rest, Mr. Independent, and if you're back together, I'm going to check flights."

He said again, "Not in this weather, nothing's flying." Unsurprisingly, he was favoring his bad side, his voice still raspy.

Of course he would know the airport predilections. He'd made a living knowing information like that. Her lips pursed. Sudden illumination. "Oh, that's the answer—I'll bet Cady would stay with you."

She could see instant fear flare in his eyes. What, only the third time she'd observed fear in him after several years of watching him successfully deal with the scum of the county? He had been more afraid of the school kids than Chance Gilbert. She didn't try to decipher either of those aberrations, instead, whipped the phone from her pocket and put it on speaker, while it rang a couple of times.

"Don't call—"

"Cady, hiiiii…yeah, it's me, guess who I have here at Durant Memorial?"

"You're back? In Wyoming? _Hospital._ What. Happened." Cady's words were chopped, but sounded as surprised about it as she was herself.

"It's not too bad, just a strip out of his hide, but Dr. Weston thinks someone needs to stay with him for a couple of days."

Pause. "Vic, I'm down in Cheyenne at a professional class through tomorrow. I-25's closed, and probably will be for two or three days. I figured I'd just hang out down here until it opens."

Her heart plummeted. So it really was back to Ferg, Eamonn or Zach…

"What about you?" Cady asked the inevitable. "You can't fly out yet, can you, could you stay with him?"

"No, I'm going to try and get out of here ASAP—"

"I know for a fact all flights are cancelled out of both Billings and Denver. I looked into that route to get back."

She didn't have to look at Walt to see the _I told you so_ in his face.

"Cady…" it was not pleading, it was pure funk.

"Well, if you stay with him, it will save you the hotel bill, and it occurs to me that after that little incident in my kitchen, maybe you two need to talk—?"

"Cady, what the fuck. You can't possibly mean that, not after that day. I _left_ partially because of that. I didn't expect I'd return."

"Oh, no, it was _really_ , that bad huh _…_?"

"Pretty much."

"I wondered why I hadn't heard anything."

She felt guilty, Cady of all people had deserved to know her plans. Maybe it was because…she wasn't sure, herself?

"If you really can't stay with him, the key's under my mat."

"Or I could drop him at your place—the roads are—well, you know how bad."

"Sure. I don't mind if dad stays there a couple of days. I should be back on Sunday."

"Okay."

She hung up and Walt looked at her as though she had grown a horn. She was feeling evil enough at that moment to merit that particular look.

"Why won't you stay with me a couple of days?" His voice was soft, pleading. "I don't want to have to have to drag Henry out there for Horse that long."

She sighed. "I don't have time to go into all the reasons. Cady says you know where the key is at her house, you can stay there."

"I have to get back to Horse."

"Ferg enlisted Henry to feed her for a few days, when you hadn't come back this morning."

"Why not the cabin?"

He still didn't understand. She snorted. "Well, the roads, for one. Barlow, Lizzie, Martha, and last but not least, _Doctor Monaghan_ for two, three, four and five. I don't feel comfortable there, or welcome. Remember, when I said I won't be the consolation prize? Your personal life is not my business? You were so right, it's _not_."

He looked down to his hands, white, tense, but somehow newly deferential. His head went down. It was a different look. "I can drop you at Cady's and go out to the cabin myself. I don't need a keeper."

"Dr. Weston says you do." She was willing to stake her turf on that. Bloomfield, and now Weston, had kept Walt alive more times than she could count, even in the few years she'd known him. "Besides, somebody's got to make sure you're not trashing your meds, doing windsprints with Horse, or chopping wood."

He was looking down, but she read _anger_. At her. Oh, _wahhhhh_ ….

Of course he was angry, hurt, maybe bitter. It had been like that between them, ever since…well, ever since he had buried her possum, which of course, represented Branch's loss for them both. For her, losing Branch had almost felt like she'd lost a brother rather than a peer. She could only imagine what it had been like for him. In more than one sense, the male deputies _were_ his only sons. They were all some dysfunctional part of his work family, anyway.

She remembered fighting Walt there at the river, pushing him away when he'd tried to touch her. She still didn't completely understand why she had pushed him away. She had been drunk, but she figured it was to save him from Toxic Moretti… _to save him_ …

Another, more sobering moment of illumination hit, as she remembered he had said he had done what he'd done to save _her…_

 _Shit_. Had they _both_ putting up walls, trying to save each _other_? She backed off from the thought, but it took hold, flowing over her almost like something from an O. Henry short story she had read in high school, _The_ _Gift of the Magi…_ Wasn't that the plot, the husband sold his watch and bought a comb for the woman who had cut off her hair to buy a fob for the watch?

She was pretty sure she had that exchange right…So, she thought she had saved Walt from becoming the fourth man Toxic Moretti had gotten killed, and he thought he saved her from his post-Branch-guilt self, thinking he had driven Branch to suicide. Even after she had been stunned by the revelation that Barlow had killed Branch, she had still figured Donaletto, Hector and almost Sean counted toward that toxicity, and kept her pushing Walt away well after the river, like when he had tried to talk to her about her fears of baseball bats, and mocked him for that later.

Much further along, when she had been ready to talk and suggested getting a burger, he had refused her. They had shut down on each other, and it had all spiraled downward from there, to her confronting him in the alley about Eamonn, and to Walt taking that knowledge and doing… _whatever…_ with Doctor Monaghan. Having Eamonn once had evidently been enough to motivate Walt to further his relationship with Donna…which meant, they evidently didn't have much to begin with.

Her thoughts tumbled around like in an agitating washing machine , and she finally gave up, it was too overwhelming for her to process at that moment. The flight from Philly, the roller-coaster of emotions followed by a full day of hiking and chasing people in the cold had transformed to exhaustion, and was catching up to her in the warm environs of the hospital. Her mind had turned sluggish, she couldn't think.

In the end, she signaled a nurse, who started the release paperwork churning. He looked at her in question. If she was mush, she was absolutely sure Walt was far worse-off than she, and arguing would just prolong the inevitable. She turned back to Walt.

"Okay. I give up. We call Henry to cancel Horse and go rescue her ourselves."

Walt perked up at that. "You sure? You can still stay at Cady's, and I'll go on out."

"No." It was all he would get.

"Well…we should probably pick up groceries…"

"Not necessary, I restocked you after Ferg told me about your pallets of beer. You've maybe got enough food for a week for one person, and enough beer for months."

He sounded a little hurt. "Just stocking up for the winter. What did you think, that I'd gone off on a Bob Barnes drunk?"

She shook her head. "I have no idea. Ferg texted _HELP_. ASD is currently staffed by the J.V. and pretty overwhelmed by that big investigation, something to do with Henry?"

He was suddenly silent. Good. She had taken the deflecting words right away from him.

"Ferg asked me to ask you to come back and help them. That's why I'm here."

"Oh." Uh-oh, he had reverted to monosyllables. Then, "I thought—"

"What?" She looked over with narrowed eyes, as he resumed his customary silence, and snorted.

He shook his head. Either the numbing was wearing off, or the entertainment portion of the last day was finally catching up with him, it was obvious now. Maybe she should have waited to ask him for help with the investigation. After all, he was already taking _time off_ , which for him seemed to include going after convicted killers _._ It had just been a lucky thing to find him while Keene was still in the vicinity and Walt was still alive.

She called Henry, but was interrupted as the nurse mercifully returned with escape papers, and they made their way to the car. Amazingly, he tried to make small-talk as he subtly leaned on her on the way out.

"What I meant—I'd thought maybe you'd come back to your job here in Durant, that you'd decided to forgive me. For Cady's."

She made a noise of disgust through her nose.

"For _Cady's_? I'm out here because Ferg said some big-ass investigation is going down at the station and you should be in on it, and then as soon as I get out here, I find you've gone AWOL."

"I hope…"

She unlocked the Bronco's passenger door and helped him in. He fastened his seatbelt. She went around to the back, fished out the dead guy blanket again, hoping it hadn't had any recent takers, brought it around to tuck around him, and closed the door.

"Please think about…"

She couldn't let him minimize it. She stopped him. "Listen, nothing will be solved tonight. You're not fit to return to duty, or to continue your leave alone, and I'm no longer a part of _any_ of that. You just—"

"I didn't accept your resignation or terminate you, Vic. You asked for time off. After what you went through last year, and then covering for me unexpectedly after Barlow, you deserved it. I figured at some point you would at least talk to me and we could sort things out. I left you messages, but when I realized you weren't ready, yet, wouldn't take my calls…"

"I—talk to _you?_ " She tried to keep a lid on it, she really did, sneaked a look at him, and was secretly terrified how ragged he suddenly looked. "Not tonight. We can't talk about this tonight."

"You wanted me to come after you?"

She wouldn't answer that. She was afraid of the answer.

The roads were passable—barely, but might not be in another hour, as the snow began to intensify again as they pulled up in front of the cabin.

She set the brake before going around, lending him a hand, and then her arm. She helped him into the house and had him sit in the big chair, and covered him with a more appropriate blanket from his sofa.

The banked fire had gone out, but in a few minutes she was able to rekindle and it sprang to life. Once he'd warmed up, he could transfer to sofa or bed. She headed toward the kitchen to put water on to boil. Before she got two feet, someone knocked at the door.

Walt made as though to rise, but as she came by, she laid a hand on his arm. "Don't you dare," she said in a low voice, and he settled back.

She put her hand on the sidearm she still wore, peeked first, then opened the door, where Henry stood there in the swirling flakes, stamping his feet and warming his hands in his armpits. She swung the door open with a smile.

"I'm sorry, Henry, I was going to call you, I can feed Horse while Walt is under the weather. I thought you'd be by later in the evening."

"No need, tonight, I came early because of the weather, finishing up and saw the lights. I am relieved to see you already home, Walt. Is there anything you two need?"

She could feel her cheeks go hot. "No, but thank you for asking. I brought in groceries."

Henry studied her, evidently found something he liked. "I heard what happened, and want to thank you for finding Walt. Not everyone would have shortened their vacation to help like you did."

She shrugged, naturally self-deprecating. "Ferg asked." She didn't want to give Henry the wrong idea, as if she had come back because of Walt or anything like that. Then she heard the words, _shortened their vacation_. Where had he heard _that_?

"Of course."

"Would you like to stay and have some cocoa? I'm going to make some, and then something to eat."

"If you wish to make hot chocolate, that would be lovely, but how would you like me to fix whatever it is you brought, and you two get cleaned up after your experiences out there? I know for a fact DM is not a favorite place for Walt, and you both still look cold."

Henry, of course, moccasin telegraph or whatever communication chain he used, always knew everything. At her WTF look he smiled. "Of course Ruby called me, and if you would like me to spell you at any time…"

She thought of all his help with Horse and how strained things had been between him and Walt, no less than between Walt and her.

"No, nothing's flying out today or tomorrow. I can stay."

"I am sure Walt would prefer that. What is for dinner?"

She mentally made a note that a week for one turned into two or three days for two, and possibly less if Henry shared their dinner. Maybe Ferg could bring groceries via snow machine…

"If this lasts, I can bring a horse out and return with some more groceries." She almost recoiled. Telepathy was not something often witnessed in Wyoming.

She took a quick shower while Walt and Henry talked. The bathroom had not changed an iota since her last visit. When she emerged, dinner preparation commenced and Walt took his own shower.

Henry made pasta, one of the things she brought and knew how to cook, and she helped with the sauce. When Walt came out, reasonably steady, he sat in front of the fire with a filched Rainier and an oxycontin in his system. She would switch him to straight ibuprofen when the small supply of that ran out, and would monitor those Rainiers.

"How is he, really?" Henry asked while he sautéed vegetables to go into the pasta.

"Not too bad. Just sore, I think. I'm glad we found him. He might not have made it back to the truck himself, and Keene might have escaped."

"Has he said anything?"

"About…?"

"Your unexpected visit, about what happened with the lady doctor, anything like that?"

"No." She shut down that line of questioning.

"Are you returning for good? He has been very vague."

"We are currently both very fucking vague."

"I just wondered. I have felt guilty because it seems to me you two have not gotten along well since that day when you came out here with the beer."

She made a noise through her nose. She could counter that. "What's fucked between us has nothing to do with you, Henry, but you and he have not been as close lately, either. Even I have seen that."

"We are all apparently wrestling with demons." It was as far as Henry would go. As far as she could tell, all three of them were still wrestling, and nobody was talking.

Walt appeared from around the corner, holding onto the corner, and gingerly leveraged himself into a chair.

"So, you girls having a nice chat?"

"Haha," said Henry. "As you used to be, the funny guy."

She stirred the sauce without comment.

"Need any help? I'm a good chopper and an expert at folding napkins."

She ripped off several sheets of paper towels and handed them to him, then set plates and silverware in a pile in front of him as well. "Have at. Dinner will be served in a few."

"It's good to see you, Henry. Would you mind getting me another Rainier, Vic?"

"It is good to see you as well, Walt. Helping with Horse has been a welcome distraction."

So something _was_ going on with Henry, presumably at the Pony. Still, not her place to ask.

"No more Rainier tonight," she replied to Walt's request. "Not with the oxy. I'll fix coffee. It'll warm you up more, anyway."

He grunted when she nixed the beer, took a breath. "We need to have a meeting with all the deputies, Henry."

"Ferg thinks they might get the plows up this direction tomorrow." She had to offer some optimism.

Henry pursed his lips. "I am not sure about that, Vic. I may even have to stay here, tonight."

Was it her imagination, or did something cross Walt's face at that notion?

"I am sure Walt means to say, _of course, Henry,_ or something like that." She pressed her own lips together, prompting him.

"Sure. Whatever is best, Henry. I know Rezdawg protests in this weather."

"I do not want to disturb either of you."

She huffed out. "You won't. I'm sure Walt will be glad of the company."

"Henry, you are always welcome."

Well, _that_ was better. She threw out there, "Maybe Walt and I can have a hot chess match after dinner, see what Lucian has taught him."

Walt's eyebrows rose, as did Henry's.

"You did not tell me she played chess, Walt." It was said with some hurt. "If Lucian knew she played, he might insist you bring her with you on Tuesdays."

"Uh."

"Yeah, you didn't know that? I don't think the sheriff knew that, Henry." She said it with a wolfish smile.

XXX

After they had finished washing the dishes, Vic peered out the front window and saw Henry's old truck covered by at least four inches of new powder. She shrugged. If he got snowed in with them, maybe _he_ could sleep in the bedroom, she'd resume her chair by the fire and let Walt have the couch. Despite the most recent oxycontin, he still seemed uncomfortable from time to time. While Henry was visiting the little boy's room, she broached it.

"You gonna let me look at it? You kept it covered in the shower?"

He merely grunted. "Henry can help me."

"Okay. If Henry stays, can he sleep in what appears to be the guest room?"

"That's what you want?"

"No, but you should sleep where you're most comfortable."

Henry came out of the bedroom. "Am I interrupting something?"

She could feel her cheeks suffuse with color, over nothing. Over stupidity.

"Look at his wound, will you, Henry? The doctor gave me stuff you can put on it three times a day, or wet or itching. He says he covered it to shower." She gave him no opportunity to demur.

"I will be glad to. Walt?" he said, gesturing to the bedroom.

When they came out, Walt looked a little pale.

"It appears to be starting to heal, it just looks very painful."

She acknowledged that. GSWs had a way of being like that.

"Walt, do you have any Lucian-provided nirvana, here? After that pleasant sight, I would not mind a drink."

"Yep, it's in the bottom desk drawer."

 _Of course, where everyone keeps the whiskey._

Henry brought out the whiskey, and three shot glasses from the kitchen.

"I think we all deserve a toast." He poured out three shots.

"We do?" She wasn't feeling it.

"We do. All three of us survived last year."

She shrugged.

Walt grudgingly took a glass full of the amber liquid. Henry handed another to her.

Her heart wasn't really in it. Her heart, messy as it might sound, was still splattered somewhere in an alley which had held an old truck resembling Henry's.

Henry toasted.

"To this year. May it be the best ever."

She smiled politely and downed her shot. She narrowed her eyes because Walt knew he shouldn't be drinking, yet he downed the shot without a word. She scowled at him. He shrugged.

"Where do you keep the chess board and pieces?" she asked.

Walt carefully rose and retrieved them from a cabinet.

Over what proved to be several more shots, she proceeded to beat Walt three times.

"Perhaps some music would be in order, Walt, to prevent further slaughter?"

Now, he _definitely_ looked uncomfortable.

"Naw, I haven't practiced since Martha died."

It was out of her mouth before she could stop it. "You played for _her._ She said you played the piano." The whiskey had done that. It was the whiskey's fault.

He looked stricken, as did Henry, and she realized that after four shots, she wasn't really sober, anymore. She could feel the blood suffuse her cheeks, and fled to the snowy porch to cool them.

Of course, it didn't work like that, the rest of her froze, but her cheeks still burned.

Walt appeared at her shoulder. "It's all right, Vic. Come on back in."

"It's common to all LEO Morettis. Socially inept. I told you, we're toxic."

"You're not toxic."

"Then why did you not pull me from the river and just _hold_ me? You made me _feel_ toxic. I was sad over the possum. And Branch."

He didn't answer.

She let her breath out, hadn't realized she'd been holding it.

"That's what I thought."

"Come in and get warm. Henry's already getting ready for bed."

She exhaled. Everything in her was sad, and she didn't like feeling that way.

"Things will look better in the morning."

There was that telepathy thing again. Who knew that it existed in _Wyoming_ , of all places?

"I'm sorry, Vic. I barely played, just a few chords, and it really wasn't for her. I stopped as soon as I felt it, it was wrong"

"You mean you kissed her. She said you kissed her first. It's in her statement. She didn't kiss you first."

"That's true. Come on, we're both going to freeze to death out here."

"Parts of me already are." Her heart may have cracked and defrosted with his earlier proximity, but it was now solidly frozen once again.

"Inside." He snaked an arm around to catch the small of her back, and escorted her back to warmth.

In the end, in the silence and warmth, she curled into the armchair, pulled the blanket even over her head and, an abject creature after the whiskey, sniffled her way to sleep.


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7**

"I've been thinking about asking Jacob for the use of a room at the casino to see if Eamonn and Zach could man a small substation there. That way, they can respond quickly since almost half our calls have become casino-related. It's a terrifyingly quick change in crime statistics, and the casino isn't chipping in on the increase in security needed county-wide because of their presence." It was said as a comment, thrown out to the room in general.

Walt was in his overstuffed chair, one of the Oxycontins in his system which may have made him so chatty, sipping a beer he had filched while she was in the bathroom. The two shouldn't mix, and he very well knew that, but she was not the one to say it again.

After a restless night on the couch, he had finally managed to get comfortable following a careful shower, hearty breakfast including oatmeal, bacon and eggs she had cooked, and meds. He was wearing a soft flannel shirt in heathery colors over a grey t-shirt in deference to his stitches. He hadn't shaved, but that was fine with her.

With a blanket over his lap, he looked relaxed, lids drooping, not how she usually saw him. She hoped he would soon let himself nap and heal. He had refused to use the bedroom for more than access to the bathroom, and to dress.

The snow had stopped sometime during the night, but hazy gray outside, it looked like it could start again anytime. She figured there was a good foot out there, and more expected.

Henry had slipped out in the early hours. Apparently Rezdawg had started and gotten him home in one piece. He had called a scant hour or so ago just to let them know it had been a tough drive, stuck twice, but that he was safe. He had left one hastily-scrawled note: DO NOT GIVE UP. She wasn't sure whether it was for Walt or her, or what it applied to, but it amused her that he even wrote without contractions.

She was puttering around, messing with her iPod and making notes on her computer, pretending to ignore the elephant in the room, who was looking pretty smoking hot to her jaded eyes, even though he was currently on injured reserve.

"What would you think of that, Vic?" he asked her directly, cutting off all possible hope of ignoring the earlier comment.

"I—" she struggled for a reply. "I think you have to do what you have to do. You think you and Ferg can handle the rest of the county yourselves?"

He gave her a searching look, and she felt as if his eyes were penetrating into her soul.

"I hope we won't have to?"

"If that's a question to me, maybe you should have been asking that when you took Donna in there." She jerked her head in the direction of the bedroom, before suddenly wishing she were at least a thousand miles away. The filters she had so painstakingly installed over the past six months had apparently been blown away by four shots of Pappy's. She had awoken with swollen eyes but no headache. It _was_ smooth, and apparently still working its wicked magic.

So now he was trying to corner her into committing coming back to work. The fucking thing was, she had nowhere to retreat to, it had snowed more since Henry left, and they were pretty well snowed in, at least until a plow could be freed to come liberate county personnel. She supposed she still counted on the books, at least, but one of the highest-ranking elected county officials certainly merited that much consideration.

"I was. Thinking about that when I was with Donna."

"Yay." Sarcasm meter pegged out.

"No. I mean, I was thinking about you. I should have wanted Donna, she was my age, a professional, unattached, witty, in that way you and Ferg call snarky."

"If you didn't want her, you did a fucking terrible job of showing that, Walt. It won't fly, the wounded and abandoned act, in the bedroom, half-dressed, and her with a bad case of razor burn, but I will. Fly. Out of here. On the wings of a plow." She moved to the window, where it was snowing again, although light and fluffy, now.

"Vic, don't…"

"You initiated all that with her. I knew when you had changed your shirt, I even saw you two together at the hospital. You can protest all you want, but you pursued her, and as soon as the roads clear and airports open, I'm. Out. Of. Here." She slammed her laptop shut as she stalked by, then suddenly wished he weren't under at least two influences. His eyes darkened and went liquid, as though she had smacked him or something. It made the heart she had hardened crack a little. _Fuck!_

"Must be all the coffee, I'm going to go pee again. Maybe I'll armor up against the elements and go visit Horse."

She stood up to head into the bedroom.

"I can go…"

She pivoted on her stocking heels. "Nowhere. Not for at least another day. Let them plow us, you can sleep at the station for all I care, but you're not screwing up all my Nurse Nancy stuff until after I leave. Not on my watch."

"Okay." It came out a lot milder than she expected, and made her suspicious.

In the bathroom, she covertly dialed Ferg.

"Help!" she whispered.

"That bad?"

"He's trying to get me to commit to staying, and talking about resuming Horse duty."

"Why don't you let him?"

"Well…because…I don't want to have to take him back to DM with his sutures ripped out, that's why!"

It was almost an audible shrug. "I don't know what to tell you, Vic. We could have taken shifts, used a snow machine to get out there…"

" _Now you tell me?"_

She heard Ferg laughing. "You really want me to, I can be out there in an hour."

It was tempting, it really was…

"Never mind, you've got the county to protect. I'm just whining. Get out here when the plow does. Can we set a meeting for all of us, out here, outside any bugs and/or conspiracy stuff that might go down at the office? We can figure out a plan."

"Sure. It's a date. I've been watching the weather, looks like it will lift tonight, and hopefully we can get out there sometime tomorrow."

"At least we can formulate something to make it work for you guys before I leave."

"Sure." It came out less heartfelt, and she was positive there was more he wanted to say. Someone, of course it was Walt, started knocking on the door. "You okay in there?"

"Of course. Out in a minute."

She ended the call, pocketed the phone and flushed the toilet, obligatory ritual hand-wash, and opened the door. His forehead was furrowed.

"Talking to yourself?"

"No. Ferg." She did not elaborate, but pushed past.

"Vic…"

"It's okay, Walt, your deputies will follow the plows tomorrow, and we'll figure out a plan for you all to work the casino case, so I can get out of here."

He was silent for a minute.

"You hate us here that much?"

The words threw her for a beat. " _Hate_ you? No. I responded to Ferg's plea, after all."

"But not to mine."

"You didn't plea. You didn't fuckin' move out of your comfort zone." She tried to move around him, but he was solid, and _large._ One of those large hands rested against her bicep.

"I called. I left messages. You didn't want to talk to me, or listen to what I had to say." He studied her, eyes like piercing arrows, as though they saw behind her façade. "You wanted me to come after you, make a romantic gesture or something? That's not what I got from your disappearance. I thought you were leaving rather than file harassment charges against me."

Her mouth bunched. "That's a fucking hoot that you would think I'd do that. _Donna_ might, but not me. Last summer, I came out here to your cabin in civvies and bearing beer. The last half of the year, this was only a place of death and deception."

That silenced him. She left him to it and began to dress for the trek out to Horse.

He finally came over to where she was layering and spoke up. "It's more than that. It's my home." His voice was that deceptively soft, beguiling one, the one that inevitably put her in danger.

"Let me put it this way, Walt. Horse has gotten way more attention than any of the women you have… _courted_ since Martha died. They have seemed only good enough for one-night stands. Doesn't that tell you something about your behavior toward women?"

He had nothing. Could say nothing. She sighed in the silence and retrieved an apple from the fridge, before she braved the frigid air to placate Horse.

Horse, at least, seemed to welcome her, and she was surprised. She was nuzzled, licked and nudged with a long nose. She counted the flakes of hay and broke the skim of ice from her water, stirring it wit until it was all liquid again. Even those heaters couldn't keep pace with storms like that. Trudging back in the snow, she wondered if she'd ever be warm again. She was pretty sure her heart had been a lost cause for some time.

XXX

They both dozed for a while, this time she on the couch and Walt in his chair, until the phone rang. Walt lumbered to his feet and answered it. She noticed how he was favoring the side. Maybe it was time for him to have another pain pill.

"Yeah, him. The one we went to see. Keene's incarcerated again, though. If I have my way, he'll never parole, and I still can't get a straight answer why he was out this time."

There was silence as Walt listened again.

"You could be right. Malachi currently has his hand in everything in Absaroka County."

Walt listened some more on his end, but looked over to where she sat huddled in the blanket on his couch, lulled back to drowsiness by the woodsy warmth and crackling of the fireplace. She tried not to look back.

"No, I'm fine. Vic's here and making sure I don't do anything stupid. Yeah, you're right, stupid- _er._ No, I don't know if she's back for good, why do you say that?

She shut her eyes as she wondered at the answer from the other end of the line. She half-opened them again.

"But everything is all right over at Snowcap Vista?"

Oh, Lucian, okay, it would do him good to talk with his mentor and chess buddy.

"Yes, Henry was over last night, yes, we played some chess."

Her eyes flew open again. Oh, _that_ was interesting. He was letting Lucian think that he had played _Henry_. She had _four_ brothers. How could she _not_ play chess? Still, she hadn't seen the board around the cabin on her previous visit. Maybe he did all his chess-playing at Lucian's?

In the end, it didn't matter. She rolled on her side, lulled by the comforting silence of the cabin punctuated only by the occasional popping log, back into sleep.

She wasn't sure how long she slept. He shook her gently. "You okay?"

"Sure. You?" Groggy.

"You slept the morning away, and I'm getting hungry. Want me to fix something?"

The drowsiness receded and she remembered her job. "No, I will. Sandwiches? Maybe with some of Henry's leftover soup?" Henry had made some soup to last them a couple of days while she and Walt had played chess. It had smelled both tasty and hearty.

"Sounds good." He moved slowly to stir the fire and add a log.

She forced herself up and toward the kitchen.

"What did you mean, you came out here bearing beer?" The question popped out as though from the ether, from right behind her as she began to heat up the soup in the microwave, and pull things out to make sandwiches. How fucking delayed was his processing speed with the meds? She had made that comment hours ago, and she wasn't properly awake, yet.

He sank into one of the chairs at the little table nearby with obvious relief, and watched her slice a tomato. Vegetables were probably a rarity in his kitchen. To be fair, most food was a rarity in his kitchen.

"I mean, I was in civvies, shirt unbuttoned a little, hair down, wearing girl boots, makeup, that sort of thing. I brought Rainier." She cleared her throat, and didn't mention the hot mess message she had left prior to coming out and had erased off his phone before she left.

"I wasn't here?"

She began to peel off a few leaves of lettuce.

"No, but Henry was. He was looking for you, it was, uh, the day of his Freed Henry party, the day before we found Branch. He was worried because you left your saddle on the fence, with the tea box in the saddlebag."

She could see his face working, as though he remembered just _which_ day. "Oh. I'm sorry I missed you. It was not a good day."

"I figured later it had something to do with Martha? Why Henry was so weird about it?"

"Her ashes. Horse and I took them out to the place where we married. I said goodbye."

She let her breath out with a _whoosh._ She would not cry. "Bad timing on my part. I didn't know."

"I know." He seemed about to say something else. Stopped.

She reached for plates and thought _Martha ate off these. Martha slept in that bed. Martha lived here, too. It was not always a place of death and deception._

With a little throat-clearing, she managed to stave off the tears, load two plates with sandwiches, and removed the soup from the microwave. She poured soup into two bowls she'd found in her rummaging.

"Lunch is served." Her throat was only a little thick. She had lost her appetite, but let him start eating, again refused him Rainier and gave him a bottle of water, his antibiotic and a pain med, while she made fresh coffee in the French press. She thought they both needed the heat and comfort of it.

XXX

After eating, they had both taken another nap, a long one. She needed it as much as he, because she'd spent the night tossing and turning in the chair before the fire, attending to it occasionally when it needed another log. He needed it because of the meds, and because, well, he obviously needed it. She knew he didn't sleep well as a rule. Time and again she would find him snoozing fitfully in a jail cell, and she usually tiptoed away. Something about his own place put him off, now. After Barlow and more recently the home invasion, maybe whatever it was put him off as much as it did her…

The afternoon had turned to darkness, and she had just returned from her jaunt to Horse to find him looking at a small bottle in a reflective manner not unlike the Santa suit a month before.

"What's wrong?"

He looked up. "Cheap whiskey. I'm guessing you brought it, but it'll burn going down. If you want any more, drink Lucian's. He swears it goes down as smooth as a baby's bottom, and I'm inclined to believe him. You seem none the worse for wear, today."

She had brought him only a small bottle, not wanting to encourage his drinking, but thinking if he were sulking, he might be out. Of course, whether beer or whiskey, he obviously wasn't.

"No, I'm good."

"Gonna be a cold night. Sure you don't want some?"

"Is that the line you used on Donna?" Her throat instantly closed up. Had she really said that? The filters must still be set to OFF.

His mouth tightened. "No. There were no lines. Donna and I each had a Rainier."

"No, never mind." Stupid question. "Like you said, the exact nature of your relationship with her is none of my business."

"She wanted me to play the piano. I didn't want to. I always thought…I hadn't played since Martha died, but I always thought…when I did again, it might be for you."

"So did you, for _her_?" She couldn't keep the hurt out of her voice.

"Not really, just a few chords, and it brought back everything which had happened between you and me, so I kissed her there to spoil that dream, because you and Eamonn had spoiled mine, and you didn't want me, anymore."

So, they had been saving each other _and_ trying to spoil…well, what had Eamonn _been,_ but a spoiler for the Walt dreams _she_ had…and still had, if her previous night tossing in the chair by the fire had been anything to judge by.

"Shit."

His eyes were working. _The eyes, it was always the eyes._ Why couldn't he just _say_ whatever was eating him?

"Walt, spit it out."

"What?"

"Whatever it is that's making you look like that. Like something is eating you alive."

"You."

She felt fight or flight kick in, that adrenaline surge that spikes when you may have to act. It was either exercise bravado or surrender. "Me, who is hopefully leaving tomorrow. I called Ferg while I was waiting for Horse's trough to fill, and they're going to try and get a plow up here by tomorrow afternoon."

"They don't have to."

" _I_ have to. I can't stay here like this, Walt. You're improving. You won't need me anymore."

She took the bottle of antibiotic pills out of her hoodie pocket, unscrewed the cap, and held one out in her palm. "That reminds me, time for the third dose today."

He reached, but took her palm and folded it, the pill inside, and moved closer.

 _Shit!_

"No." She did force the word out, breathy, before he took her lips with his, not gentle, not tender, but with the force of a man who'd held back for a long while. She struggled and pulled back, jerked her arm out of his.

"Stop fucking around. We can't do that." She unfolded her palm and held it out straight, as a barrier between them. "You set the rules. No excuses."

His lips bunched, but he plucked the pill out of her palm and washed it down with the leftover water from earlier. He licked his lips, as though the water had been tasty. It was her undoing. The full lips, the tongue.

"Satisfied?"

It was the wrong question added to the simplest wrong action, one which tipped the balance of her control. He had woken the ravenous monster within her which had not been fed for months. Somehow, taking care of business herself had not been appealing at all, especially when there were those dreams to contend with. Nothing she might do could compete with those. And now…this.

It all overwhelmed her, and she trembled with a heady mix of hunger and sadness. Before she realized it, she was out on the porch, dialing.

At least it picked up. "Ferg? Were you kidding, or did you say you could get a snow machine out here, _stat_?"

When she lifted her eyes, Walt was watching her from the door, and she thought she had never seen him look so sad, even when she had first been hired and he was still mourning Martha.


	8. Chapter 8

_**A/N: Please note continuation of HOLIDAY theme—this time, Fourth of July weekend. Unexpectedly, this story still has some "legs"…probably another two or three chapters.**_

 **Holiday from her Holiday**

 **Chapter Eight**

 **Bismarck**

It had been six months since she had left snow-bound Durant and finally, after endless wrangling with her family and unable to make any decisions, had plunked her finger on a map which after a few phone calls from Head of Detectives North Victor Moretti, had landed her three months ago in Bismarck, North Dakota. Work in the Bakken shale region had nearly collapsed with the lower oil prices, but that had only made her services more necessary. After several years' experience in the west, and dealing with rowdy Newitt drillers and the often-associated casino pecadilloes and egregious sins alike, she was more than prepared to handle the roughnecks and out-of-control folks now dealing with unemployment and depression. It certainly brought employment her way.

With her background, Captain John Prodencko had immediately put her on as a probationary detective. She figured her credentials were at least as good as his, so maybe that wasn't such a stretch to move up from patrol, after all. She expressed interest in becoming an Undersheriff. He had laughed at her. It had stung a little.

"We don't have those here," he said, "but you could easily become a Lieutenant down the road. Show me your stuff."

So she showed him. It was far easier than in Durant, because she had backup resources.

In the wake of her past life, which ended up mere ripples, she still got the occasional phone calls or texts from Ferg, who was surprisingly uncurious about where she had moved or what she was doing. The ones from Ruby she thought might be a coordinated effort directed by Walt, so she never answered those, even though she sometimes felt bad about it. Then she remembered how Ruby had conspired with Lizzie, and then Donna, for Walt. She felt less bad about it, then.

Her family was even worse. They thought she had lost her mind and was still wasting her life. In their eyes, there was little difference between the 48th-least populated state and the 50th. And really, North Dakota wasn't so much different than Wyoming. Bismarck might have been a town in the middle of the state, but at least it wasn't the infamous Fargo. It still held the same yahoos, ranches, loose livestock and ornery humans as Durant, except she was now in what passed for a comparatively metropolitan area, and that was a problem.

Every day she worked for John Prodencko, she became more restless and less focused. Despite longing for it years ago in Philly, she no longer wanted to be a police detective or work in a precinct. Her homesickness was for all places, Wyoming, the wide-open spaces, not for metro wannabees. Surprisingly, it was not just for Walt, anymore, but for Wyoming. Or maybe for her, Walt _was_ Wyoming. Sometimes it was hard to differentiate the two.

Captain Prodencko had called her into his office just the past week.

"Something you don't like here, Moretti?"

She didn't like feeling under fire for nothing.

"Excuse me?" She put full Philly attitude into it.

"You're not following protocols, there are reports that you go off on your own."

"Oh."

"Just _oh_?"

"No sir—it's just taking a while for me to acclimate."

"Acclimate to _what_?"

"To a bigger department," she said honestly. "Sometimes it takes four or five people to accomplish what I used to do alone. I wore a lot of hats before."

"Well, you got _one_ hat here, so—wear it!"

"Yes sir." She ducked out, ears thoroughly pinned back, and a string of _fucks_ helplessly stuck in her craw.

Her relocation worked in other, stranger ways, as well.

She had almost stopped drinking. She had not lost interest in softening the stings of life, for Bismarck certainly provided plenty of need to drown her sorrows, but there just seemed to be no point. It well and truly couldn't help change her location or job or anything. She had chosen her bed and must now lie in it.

Other beds were another thing. There was also that she no longer wanted the fast fuck and the easy grab. She was past that. No one grabbed her, either. She figured she had reached the age she was no longer as interesting or beautiful, her face showed now that life had been hard for her. It had been that way, really, since Chance's. Eamonn had been a strange workplace flirtation more than anything else, even if her feelings for Walt hadn't been involved, which of course, they had been.

Walt.

She huffed out at the thought. They'd never had a date, but they would die for each other. It had all gone to shit, and she still didn't completely understand why.

That's why she would sit on the below-grade terrace of her apartment and stare up across the street at the bar, there. It frustrated and bored her that she didn't want either to drink or think, and nothing else seemed to call to her. She thought of maybe getting a dog, but was afraid it would die from neglect. She had to learn to take care of herself, first.

Work was boring, unfulfilling, sparse, for someone used to the grueling double or longer shifts to accommodate being understaffed.

Because Bismarck was humid, most evenings drove her inside again to the hum of the air conditioner and the comparative sterility of her life. A month or so ago, a guy, big surprise a superior named Brady, had asked her out for drinks, and she'd turned him down flat. She hadn't asked if he were married, but it didn't matter because she didn't intend to give in. She had no idea what was wrong with her.

And then one day a few weeks ago it had dawned on her: absolutely _nothing_ was wrong with her. She'd somehow come intact out of the rabbit-hole that was Durant. So, if there wasn't anything wrong with her, what _was_ wrong?

North Dakota was ostensibly in the west, but something had definitely happened. Evidently, while she hadn't been paying attention, Wyoming had sneaked under her skin. Or was it Walt? She allowed, it was probably both. And now it was too late for either of them.

XXX

It was Friday evening July 2nd, and she was off for three days. Senior staff got the holiday overtime, and she had good intentions of catching up on laundry, cleaning her apartment and getting a lot of sleep. She'd been invited by one of the other detectives who took pity on her new and unattached status to attend a picnic, but she'd professed other plans. She was so not up for it.

Just before she'd punched out, she'd turned down Brady once again, but it was harder each time, and a niggling shadow of her former self whispered that she really should have some social life. She had thought about approaching females in the department and pursuing the notion of a gal-pal, but the other women on the force talked about little more than husbands, babies, playdates and recipes, and she had very little in common with any of them. Again, she had chosen her course.

So that afternoon she took the bus to her apartment and walked down the few steps to her dungeon door. She could have rented one upstairs for more exercise and the light, but she took the cheapest one, a slightly-below ground floor unit. Once inside, she contemplated what little was in her fridge, turned the a/c to chill, changed to shorts and a tank, and made boxed macaroni and cheese. It was a grim and frequent ritual.

When she moved the M&C off the stove to cool, she could see her phone was flashing. It was a text from Ferg.

 _Guess whoz in chrg? Walt fishing S, S & M, tag I'm it._

Her mouth turned up in pride. Ferg had come so far, so quickly. Eamonn and Zach must have set up at the Casino, then, to be intercepting the bad guys there. Her mouth quirked, wondering who was back-up for Ferg, in case something really bad happened and Walt wasn't reachable. Then her mind quirked back, out of gear. Not her department anymore, no longer her problem, but it worried at her just the same. She finally gave in and texted him back.

 _Just u & Ruby?_

 _No, new deputy, me & Lucian dispatch S&S&M. Training newbie. Henry on call._

Oh, okay, so Walt had finally replaced her. Somehow that wasn't as comforting as she had supposed it might be. She went back to her mac and cheese, but her appetite had suddenly vanished. She contemplated the texts as some might contemplate their navel, and she puttered around gathering laundry and cleaning. Sometime later, the doorbell rang.

Nobody visited. Ever. It must be a solicitor. She'd send them on their way with a hearty fuck…she swung the door open, and her heart lept. Well, for a second it flipped or did something unusual, anyway.

Walt stood there in ball cap, t-shirt and well-washed jeans with holes in the knees, standing there looking…resolute. Terrified. Contrite. And…really, really _good._

 _Walt fishing…_

"Vic?"

She was trying to figure out how long it had taken him to get there, through Billings, or taking a short-cut over, and if he were in contact at all with the office. She wondered how long he'd sat in the truck getting his courage up. She wondered how the _fuck_ he had found her! So she finally articulated…

"What the fuck, Walt?" Well, the hearty fuck applied, after all. Wait—was this his idea of _the romantic gesture_ he had asked her about at the cabin? Her heart thawed a little until she remembered that he was manipulative, and he must have gone to some technically unscrupulous effort to find her. She crossed her arms over her chest, because she could see him staring there. He had rarely seen her in tight tanks where the outline of her breasts left nothing to the imagination, since most of the time he saw her with her uniform shirt over another shirt or tank.

"I'm going fishing tomorrow about forty miles from here, wondered if you'd like to come along."

"Fishing." She could help the sarcasm, it flowed through her like honey, and yet, that tiny niggling seed of doubt persisted. _Had he figured it out, yet?_

"Yep." A flimsy enough excuse, but how the _hell_ would he know where to fish in North Dakota?

"How did you find me, Walt?"

His lips bunched, as though unwilling to reveal his source.

Her eyebrows rose. "My dad?"

His head jerked. "I believe Ruby called your mom about some mail to forward."

"Ah. Sherlock 101. Ruby should be so proud."

"It wasn't like that, Vic. I just happened to see the address…Ruby didn't squeal on you."

"Okay." She accepted that, she'd always liked Ruby despite her persistence about older women for Walt, until the dispatcher had gotten testy with her during and after the Barlow hiatus. The fact that as a pinch-hitter she didn't mesh with Ruby as well as Walt had hurt the older woman, she guessed. The fact she _wasn't_ Walt had probably also been a factor.

She tried speaking very softly. "I don't know if you remember why I left, Walt. I couldn't take it, anymore."

"Are you…talking about after Keene shot me, or before?"

She really didn't want to have this conversation, but really, _really_ didn't want to have it with him standing in her doorway.

"Come on in. Want some mac and cheese?"

He brightened perceptibly. "Sure."

She could feel him taking in the lacking décor and construction. It was essentially Old Vanilla a la Old Garage Sale. She had sought the cheapest place while living on a probationary salary.

She heated it up and he ate, and she fished out a beer chaser for him. She did keep a six pack around, but rarely drank, especially alone, anymore. Still, it was a Rainier. He eyed it in surprise.

"I thought you didn't like Rainier."

"It was on sale." That was a lie, but she wouldn't tell him it made her feel a little closer to Wyoming. And him. And Wyoming.

He ate and drank a little, then stopped. "You aren't eating."

She shrugged. "Not hungry, yet. I was going to eat it later. So, how long did it take you to get here?"

About seven hours. I took a short-cut."

"Long drive to fish."

Now he shrugged. Paused. Looked her in the eye. The eyes, it was always the eyes, _shit._

"I miss you, Vic."

She pressed her lips together. "Let me guess. You miss my…duty rosters?"

"You. Working for me, or not. Either way, or both."

"That's quite a concession, oh, master of ambiguous statements."

"Truth."

"Okay, truth, if you must. The Rainier wasn't on sale."

That earned a grin. She gave him a long-suffering look. "So, what if I don't go fishing with you?"

"Then, maybe I go back to Durant without a catch."

"I'm not something to be fucking _caught_ , Walt."

"I didn't mean you. I really mean to go fishing, but if you don't want to, I may not. I have a friend forty miles south of here who has cabins with river footage. One got free last minute, illness in the family or some such."

"Oh." Mollified. "That close?"

"That close. I promise to have you back whenever you need to be."

She thought about it. Every fiber of her warned her of danger in proximity to this man, and that he had been that master of ambiguity for as long as she could remember. She thought about accepting.

Instead, "Why are you really here, Walt?" She looked him directly in the eyes. There, no flinching allowed, she had pinned him.

"I told you at the cabin. You."

"What, you want me back as deputy."

"No! Yes! I mean, I want you to come back, but if you don't want to work for me, that's okay, too."

"By working for you, you mean, so you can make my decisions for me again, bark at me, humiliate me in front of Eamonn, check up on me after hours, why would I want that, Walt?"

"I just want to be able to love you."

After that remarkable statement, she stepped back, regrouped. She couldn't let him do that to her. It was not his right, nor was he allowed.

"Well, why didn't you just come right out with you wanted a fuck. We can just step to the back and take care of that, and then you can get on with the fishing and return to Durant with a clear conscience. Isn't that what you do with all your women? One and done?" She was just getting wound up, but he had gone white. Maybe she had gone too far.

"That's not why I'm here."

'Then just tell me."

"I want…I want you to want me enough to go out with me. I want to at least try."

" _Go out with you_?" What, were they in high school again? Upon reflection, maybe he still was stuck there, in that time. Maybe that's where he really was in that Old School Relationship brain of his.

"I know some of this is about Donna. I really didn't want it to go so far with Donna, I thought I'd figure out the puzzle while she stayed with me. But you had thrown me away, so I would have slept with her. In the end, getting close did work with Donna. It drew Donna's stalker, and exposed her. She's just been indicted as the kingpin in that Zoloft ring, she got kickbacks for each distribution to augment her tiny-ass VA salary."

Remarkable. She never would have thought that. Wait…what had he said?

" _I_ threw _you_ away?" She couldn't believe he thought that. "Whatever happened after you scattered Martha's ashes, you made sure I wasn't making any more trips out to your cabin bearing beer with my hair down, that's for sure. You became _emotionally unavailable_ for months."

He looked anguished, then stony. "I did, at that. I…just wasn't right. I didn't want to lose any more of you. That wasn't really me. I tried some therapy with Donna, but that didn't work, either."

"It _was_ you, and I just don't know what to tell you."

"It was me, but not me. Not who I am now."

"I think you should head back to Durant." She was weary, and just wanted to sleep, and maybe cry a little, and she didn't want to do either in front of him. It had been one fucking shitty week following a lengthy succession of them.

"Tell me, tell me I can stay on your couch tonight. Let me hold you. If you want me to leave in the morning, I will."

The earnest plea touched her, but her eyes narrowed warily. "No tricks?"

"No tricks, I swear. I'm just too tired to turn around and go back now. I thought…I thought…"

She really looked at him for the first time, the shadows under his eyes, and he was gray, maybe still not completely healed from his brush with Keene. She knew he hadn't been sleeping well before she'd left. She hadn't expected that would continue, that he would heal and recover from the shocks and roller-coaster of the previous year as time went on.

"You thought we'd have a heartfelt reunion and I'd go back with you."

"No. I hoped. Hoped only. I've been doing a lot of hoping, but Vic…"

"Yeah?" She tried not to be suspicious.

"Vic, you have to tell me when I'm out of line. You are the only one who does that, now. Ruby used to, but even she does that less and less, and she's getting ready to retire."

He needed her for… _that?_ He pursued her here for her to…dress him down?

Illumination struck. "That's what Martha did, wasn't it? She told you when you were about to cross lines, so you could step back? Or if you had crossed a line? _She_ was your filter?"

He hung his head, and she let out a long sigh.

"So finally, truths. How about one for me?"

His head came back up, and she thought of the great dinosaurs, slow and majestic of the Triassic. His head canted, and she could just imagine it in some gymnosperm jungle.

"Where were you, really, when I came out to your cabin and Henry was there? The empty tea box was in the saddlebag, so you had already scattered Martha's ashes."

A pause. She said it very slowly, no misunderstandings. "It has to be truth, or there can't be anything between us, ever, Walt. I don't know when you and Cady and Henry started lying to each other, but I'm fucking tired of it all."

His lips bunched, the shaggy head went down. He was an apatasaurus in defeat. He said very quietly, "I was out to kill Jacob Nighthorse."

She let out her breath. Huge exhale. So _that_ what it was all about.

"And…why is Jacob Nighthorse still alive?" she asked equally as slowly.

"Because Henry tracked and saved me. Because he said we had both been given second chances."

"So yours…"

"I thought I was doing right, keeping deputies at a distance so no more of them died. Then I found the architect of Martha's murder had also killed his own son."

"But, like Han Solo, you fired first, right? Suicide by cop?"

"I'm not sure about Han Solo, but…right."

"And then your second chance…"

"Turned to shit. You had found Eamonn, just when I thought I might be ready for a new relationship."

Her brows scrunched. She was astounded by his words. "Walt, I never _found_ Eamonn. We never even had what could be construed as a _date._ What happened to you? The great detective never did the work to find out that he and I only hooked up the once, and only after you lied to me about the shirt, at the hospital, all about Donna."

"Really only the once?"

She gave him the WTF look in response, the _I have told you, now shut up_ one.

His head hung again. "You were right, I wanted her if I couldn't have you, she was everything Ruby wanted for me. Smarter than Lizzie, a professional woman."

"Uh-huh, and I'm not either of those."

"In her eyes, you're too young."

She exhaled and barked out a laugh. "Not anymore. Wyoming aged me, Walt. That shit that went down at Chance's, divorce, eviction, running the office while I was still recovering from that, while you were on hiatus…I'm old inside, and I don't care about much of anything, anymore."

"I'm sorry."

"I'm sorry, too."

He suddenly moved forward, took her hand, and pulled her into a hug, his head against her neck, his mouth at her ear.

"So very sorry."

She sighed, desperate not to cry. "We fucked it up."

He whispered against her hair, "I think I know how to make it up to you."

She shook her head, dislodging his. "I don't know if that's possible…"

"Let me try."

She felt serenity flow through her. Just his voice, comforting, could do that for her. Maybe he was a Vic Whisperer, which made her wonder if maybe one night together on the couch before he left forever wouldn't be so bad…but it would likely lead to other things she couldn't handle, not yet.

She shook her head again, freeing herself of the spell. He was Walt the Wizard, but she was not as susceptible as she used to be.

"Just the couch, the night, and you go back in the morning."

"You have my word."

He was as good as his word, pulled her over to the couch and just held her, for a long, long time. He made no demands and there was no discussion, no pleading, nothing she had to refuse.

But in that tiny place deep in her which had defrosted over the last six months, it was heaven, and in the morning, she said she would fish with him.


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter 9**

 _ **A/N: Don't think you were seeing things, I pulled this chapter. I hope it reads a little better, now. It was a booger chapter, but spoke to me that the story wanted to be longer. Fie on it! This was supposed to be a short holiday gift! Well, I suppose the next holiday in the story will be Thanks-taking…**_

 **Saturday July 3** **rd**

Of course she had changed her mind. Even one night of being held by Walt on an uncomfortable couch in a dark and depressing apartment to the humming of an ancient air conditioner instead of birds, could do wonders. It had brought back every moment, every conversation, every look and touch from the day they met: from swinging on Mathias to protect Walt, frank discussion in the Sublette's bedroom, not exactly sharing a beer in an Arizona motel's bar, out of breath while holding a gun on Eli to prevent Walt's summary execution, and the first and last time being held by him in the hospital exam room.

Since then, since those days when they had been so close, she could only remember pushing him away and falling into the river, rebuffing his offers of talking, stung when he wouldn't get a burger with her, being upbraided for ID'ing the girl's body, embarrassed at how she had run the office while he'd been on a month's leave even while she suffered blinding headaches courtesy of Chance, the punch in her nose, or both. Worst, thumbing her nose at Cady's courtesy by sleeping with Eamonn just to hurt Walt. Unfortunate, her confession in the alley, and his response, it blew them all to hell, and then Walt cornering her on the counter at Cady's house. Lastly, finding him hurt but alive, and how he had kissed her at the cabin, enough to make her run away.

She had tried not to think of any of those things on either side of the scale for the last six months. A tiny, incomplete part of her still had the photo Gorski had snapped of them in front of the motel doors well hidden. But Walt's arms around her gave her the time, and the freedom, to remember.

It had been a night of reflection, both of what they had lost, and what he had done to her and she to him. It also brought her to what he had done now, left his comfort zone and actually executed that romantic gesture she had alluded to at his cabin in January. She had to admit that it spoke to her. She knew he hadn't been right, or well, over the past year. She just had no idea if he was, now.

She decided to go fishing with him.

They left Bismarck at 5:30 am. He had gently shaken her awake at 5:00 am, after which she had been able to throw out a few token fucks about the time. In the end, she packed only a night bag, just in case they opted to stay at the fishing cabin and drive back the next day.

Before they left, she managed to get awake enough to say, "I'm not sure about this cabin deal, especially how it was with you after Branch, Donna, and then that scene at Cady's, Walt."

"I'm just asking for a chance, Vic. Just today, if that's all you want. I'll bring you back whenever you ask."

"I'm not coming back to Durant, Walt. I won't work for you again."

He exhaled, head down, lips bunched, and nodded.

"I know. You've made it clear that we're just fishing today."

They drove out of town and about another half an hour at speed, and she refused to look at the needle. Walt had borrowed Omar's big black truck for the weekend, no surprise since a Wyoming Sheriff's Bronco, whether elderly or new would definitely look a little out of place for R&R, but although it felt like fifty, she was sure they were doing at least ninety.

Her phone lost service about ten miles from their destination. It was like losing a link to civilization, but she shrugged. She had never felt unsafe with Walt, only angry and frustrated.

At the main house up from the river frontage, Walt had introduced her to his friend, Fred Manton.

"Wow, Walt, you always do find the prettiest ladies."

She tried not to react at that, wondering who else he might have brought out there.

As they drove down to park the truck by the cabin, Walt said, "Fred loves to exaggerate. I brought Martha here once, but she wasn't much on fishing."

No Lizzies? No Donnas? Well.

They'd gotten the key, put away perishables, with a target to fish by 7 am. The cabin was tiny but clean and welcoming, and she had a sudden, fervent wish that Walt's was like this one, without all the Martha-Lizzie-Barlow-Donna vibes marring its simplicity.

While unpacking the groceries, which seemed like a lot for a day of fishing, and finally awake, she spoke up. Walt was over at his tackle box sorting sinkers and lures and whatever.

"So, how do you know Fred?"

"Fred and I go way back. We served in the Marines together."

"Huh. Another one, huh? Like the Brannan and Olsen guys you mentioned? Lots of Marine friends?"

"Olufsen. Tim Olufsen was our superior. Steve Brannan and I were both lieutenants, and we bonded, we were both from the west, both with Indian friends and family. Those two didn't make it back, but I have a few friends who did. Those are experiences you don't ever forget and create bonds for forever. Semper Fi isn't just a motto."

She wanted to hug him for that, for sharing that with her, which might signal the end of the Sharing Shut-out, but she didn't. They were there to fish.

They almost made their 7 am target. At 7:14 Walt cast his first line. She held his while he readied hers, and he helped her, standing behind her to make sure her motion was correct, but even through her jeans she could feel his, er, enthusiasm, for the project. She let him. After all, she was there to catch fish, and really didn't mind that he showed his attraction to her, however involuntarily.

They fished a rushing tributary which lay only a few miles from the sluggish Missouri. It was actually quite pretty. She hadn't known that North Dakota had places like that. It made her homesick for the steeper rushing ones that Ferg had hiked her up to in the foothills of the Bighorns a few times.

She hadn't made female friends in Durant, but she and Ferg got along fine after he stopped being afraid of her. Working together after Cady's accident had really helped her realize that he was genuine and pretty smart, he just needed guidance. For two years she had been steadily but quietly encouraging Ferg to completing numerous training sessions, also lobbying Walt and Henry to take him under their respective wings and have him accompany them more. She had even considered asking Omar to take Ferg up with him on one of his guided trips, let Ferg show his stuff to the paying public.

She and Walt fished for three hours, until it began to get really warm. She had practically forced sunscreen on Walt, and of course wore hers, because she didn't fancy sunburns as souvenirs of their mini-vacation. Of course, North Dakota was more humid than Wyoming, and seemed to produce more insect life, but she had been smart and packed her DEET repellant for them both as well.

She caught four fish, Walt eleven. Not bad for a Philly rookie who had only had a few brief coachings from Ferg a couple of years ago, and then the more distracting lesson this very morning from Walt. These weren't the compact Wyoming brook trout Ferg liked, these were larger.

"So these fish are like the Wyoming trout? They like flies, too?"

"Some of these get pretty big here on the Missouri, but they still like flies."

"Ah."

Walt pulled the string of fish from the stream, where they had stayed cool. He began to clean their catch.

There is nothing sexier than a man wearing a t-shirt cleaning fish, even gutting, cutting heads and tails off, ready to toss the mess downstream so as not to attract predators.

Walt looked like a man's man supermodel during a photo shoot in the wilderness. Even as he began to sweat in the warming day, she just wanted to lick it off his forehead and where it beaded just above his lips. She squatted by him, absently licked her own dry lips in sort of a mockup of her fantasy, and looked to him in question.

"Walt, so, what are we doing here, really?

He looked over with a half-smile, his concentration on the fish broken. He quickly unsmiled when he saw her face. "Um, you mean, what are we doing beyond cleaning fish?"

"You said this was just for today, but your whole trip wasn't about today, was it?" She heard the Walt-like inquisition in her voice. Well, she had been mentored by a master.

She just tilted her head, waiting.

He shifted his weight where he knelt, laying one forearm across a thick thigh. "I told you, I've been hoping. I hope today goes toward figuring out the next thirty or so years? At least, that's why I'm here."

She inhaled sharply, rocked back a little, watching him re-evaluate the remainder of his catch. The knife began to make those precision gut cuts again. She got her breathing under control. He wasn't here for small change, and she needed to admit that she wasn't either, not really. She could say she had just accompanied him to fish for companionship, but she had passed that marker the day she had crossed his cabin door bearing beer. It had all just gone so very terribly wrong after that.

She cleared her throat again. "Good answer. Me, too."

The knife stopped again. The smile he bestowed on her this time was blinding. She didn't remember ever seeing it before. She had seen a man mourning his murdered wife, she had seen him after he had taken on Martha's murderer, trying to resist her flirting in Arizona. She had never seen this. He seemed almost embarrassed at revealing that, ducked his head and returned without comment to focus on his business, but it seemed to be progressing at a faster pace.

"Are you hungry?" he asked, not looking up.

She didn't have to think about it. "Ravenous. Could we have breakfast afterwards?"

"After…this?" He gestured to the fish and looked over again in question.

"After we satisfy the ravenous?"

It was not her imagination. The gutting frequency had definitely picked up.

"You sure?" He did not look up.

"Yep." She made it two syllables. Let her steal one of his lines.

He sucked his breath in, as though she'd taken his. "I'll need the baking soda to get the smell off my hands. Could you get it for me?"

First things first, she decided, for she had no interest in fishy hands. She stood up and began to trek toward the cabin to retrieve it from the box of groceries still on the kitchen table.

"Vic."

She stopped and turned, tilted her head in question.

"Me, too. Ravenous."

This time, it was she who grinned as she headed up to the cabin. He'd better get those hands good and clean…

XXX

Their temporary fishing idyll ended abruptly as Walt was rinsing his hands after thoroughly washing them in baking soda and dish soap. She was standing over him, more or less supervising. Maybe less supervising, more just enjoying the minor domestic task and admiring his hands... She was really wishing those hands would get busy somewhere else, fast. Say, on her.

A crunching of gravel on the path announced Fred, trotting toward them, a mobile phone in hand.

She had a sudden, urgent feeling. No, not like she had to pee, although she did, not the desire she had kept banked since she had opened her door to him the day before, something even more important. She took stock. It was late morning, and the holiday was the next day, but that wasn't it. Walt hadn't seen his friend, yet.

She didn't hesitate. She called up the path. "What is it, Fred?"

Walt looked up and his face changed. He dried his hands quickly on the towel lying across his thigh. Lucky towel.

Fred reached them and handed the phone to Walt. She had a terrible premonition that their temporary accord and possible discussion of the next 30 years, was about to be put on hold.

"Longmire."

She watched Walt as he mostly listened, his face grow set and grim. _That_ expression back, oh, _shit._

"We'll call you back from the truck within the hour."

Her breath, almost suspended from the moment she had seen Fred approaching them, came out in a rush. Walt handed the phone back to Fred. She had seen that grim face before, it seemed like the one he'd worn forever. It no longer the blinding smile from just a few minutes before.

"I'm sorry, Fred. Something came up at the station. Going to have to cut the holiday short."

Fred shrugged. "Sorry to hear that. Bring your lady back soon, huh?"

She bit her lip. She had a feeling that wouldn't happen, at least not in the near future. The feeling continued to sink _. Something big…_

The two men shook hands, and Fred headed back up the slope. Walt turned to her.

"We need to get out of here. Hopefully we can find some bars for your phone on the road. The truck has GPS but not a phone."

"Why?" She hated being in the dark.

"That was Eamonn. He wants us to call on our way back."

"Our way—well, you can drop me off in Bismarck, it's not so far out of your way."

That stopped him, but his look didn't change.

She swallowed. "You're kidding, you gotta be shitting me. Not to Durant?"

"I don't know, or even why Eamonn called, yet," he said. "He isn't taken to flights of fancy, though, and he said to call his cell phone. Ferg gave him Fred's number. We just need to call him from the truck."

His lips were set, stubborn. She needed to hear the particulars before passing judgment. And of _course_ Ferg had the number for a place Walt liked which had good fishing.

"Okay. I'll pack."

They walked separately through the shower, after which it took her all of ten minutes to pack for both of them while Fred brought over ice and Walt packed the fish in foil and on ice in his cooler to keep until Durant.

"Sorry you had to leave so soon," Fred said, and she gave him a brief hug. She genuinely would not mind returning, and spending quality time there in the future. If they had a future, that is. They still didn't know what was wrong, or why they had been called back so soon.

XXX

Less than half an hour later were barreling up the dirt road toward Bismarck in Omar's beast. She sat staring at her phone as they approached the interstate. Bars appeared, followed by a screenful of texts and voicemails, some from Eamonn, some from Ferg.

"What the fuck!"

"What's wrong?"

"Ferg and Eamonn both really, really want to get hold of us!" she said, and began to play the messages through. She put them on speaker for Walt.

When the messages ended, he looked over to her. She had now seen him afraid for the fourth time.

"Vic…"

"I don't know what to do first. Should I call Eamonn back?"

"No, I will, in a minute."

"You gonna drop me off in Bismarck, then?" She didn't want to be a distraction in all of it, especially after their tentative discussion just before Fred's untimely appearance.

"Nope. He'll come after you in Bismarck just as easy, and there's no way to protect you there. We're headed back to Durant."

She was about to protest when the phone rang. Eamonn. She handed the phone to Walt.

"Yeah. Yeah. The Feds?" He winced visibly to her eyes. "You sure—well, yeah, obvious ladder of corruption, no, I haven't liked the new guy, yeah, I know the old one was, too, this one's worse. Yeah, let them investigate that, it'll take six months and Vic and I'll both be dead. Yeah, I get it. We're on our way back. Yep, together, we were fishing."

Walt pulled over to the shoulder a couple of miles away from the entrance ramp to I-90. He hopped out of the truck.

She opened her door and called, "What are you doing?"

He went around to the locked side compartments, used the key and pulled out some large flat pieces, what appeared to be a round piece of fabric, and some lengths of wire.

"Badging up, reinstalling the LED lights and tire cover. I've deputized Omar before, maybe not much after I hired you, but he's helped me out before, even just a couple of months ago. You know, it's like when I deputize Henry, or Lucian, when I need an extra body. He keeps his truck ready just in case."

"Who knew, Omar as a deputy? Slumming?"

"No, we're just friends from way back, and yep, he can be handy in a pinch, like when I'm down to two deputies."

"Well. I know he flies you and Henry and Cady places. And here I thought he was just a rich guy whose wife made out like a bandit divorcing him."

"That, too."

The brief but genuine grin he threw her made her smile a little. He slapped a rotating light and badge on the roof and one on each door, got in and hooked up the wires into the dash for a row of LED lights imbedded in it by the windshield.

As he slid back into the driver's seat he said, "Omar and I have been friends for almost as long as Henry and I have. We have a few harrowing stories, a couple of them even include Henry, and several more with just the two of us."

"I'd really like to hear all of those someday."

"Sure. We have time on the way back…"

"Um. I think we probably have some other things we need to talk about on the way back. Like, a plan?"

His lips bunched again and she sighed, but it was true, they had a lot to talk about that did not involve Omar.

With Absaroka badging, he put the lights on without siren, pulled back onto the road, and took the next exit, I-90 West. They had at least eight hours of daylight left in the mid-summer sky.

"I'll take the shortcut before Billings, we'll be back there in five hours and figure out what the hell is going on."

"Walt."

"Yeah."

"Is _fishing_ what you're calling what we were planning on doing at the cabin?"

Despite the urgency, the seriousness of the situation, the corners of his mouth turned up. "We have an iced chest with enough fish to show for it. Yep, I'm sticking with my story."

"And were you suggesting we go _fishing_ for the next thirty-or-so years? Lots more _fishing_?"

His eyes flickerered over to hers for an instant. Intense, the hesitancy still there, trying to stifle the unspoken question behind them.

"If you're game..."

"Maybe." It was not a promise, it was all she had at the moment. His eyes went back to the road, but his face bordered on amusement despite the grim expression he habitually wore.

"Love amidst the shit-storm," she mumbled, and made her first call, the necessary one to Prodencko's office. He had always maintained she was on probation and could leave any time she wanted. Well, now, she definitely wanted. When she was done, she was silent, but Walt's hand crept over and covered hers.

"Second thoughts?"

"No. First ones." She added without thinking first, "It's a huge gamble, don't you think, after this past year?"

His mouth turned grim again and he resumed driving. She heard what she had said, and hated herself for it. They had enough on their plate right now.

"Okay, so I admit it, I'm hoping for one of those second chances you got last year." She really didn't want to see the grim face again, but she knew the calls had brought it back. In what seemed like a response to her addendum, she caught the corners of his mouth twitch almost imperceptibly.

So, thirty-plus years it might become, if they could manage to survive the newly "escaped" or "released" Stanley Keene. Eamonn had not been able to make much sense of the event, only that Keene was out, probably armed, dangerous and after one or all of the Absaroka County Sheriff's Department.

If what Eamonn and Ferg believed was true, Malachi had decided his only course of action was to let one of Walt's enemies take him out to derail the investigations against him, and Malachi seemed to have something over Tri-County's warden, after Henry's treatment at Malachi's hands, after releasing Malachi despite the negative hearing, and now Keene, in spite of having shot an officer of the law.

After hearing of the improper release and without Walt's input while she and Walt had been bar-less, Eamonn had not hesitated to call the Feds, despite Ferg voicing his protests based on Walt's opinion of their organization and work. Eamonn had based his speed for assistance on a snitch in prison who had told a guard, who had told Ferg, that Keene wanted to get back at "the bitch who had shot him because she loved him too much."

She sighed and made a noise through her nose. She had her man, and she would die before letting Keene get him. One or both of them might not make it. With less than a day of healing, and so much against them, the next thirty-or-so _years_ remained in question.

She held the fervent hope that Agent Towson wouldn't be leading the FBI team. Towson or not, until Keene was recaptured or killed and the warden deposed, they were so fucked, and maybe even after that. She was convinced that even if one of his pawns were captured, Malachi would never give up and never go back to prison, just unleash another of his pawns upon them until one got lucky.

He would never give up.

But she knew Walt. Neither would he.


	10. Chapter 10

Holiday from Her Holiday

 _ **A/N: Unlike one guest review observed, this site isn't a Longmire Graveyard. It's possible some of the fan writers may be in the doldrums between a pretty unstimulating Season 4 and Season 5 as it takes shape. Tony Tost announced this morning on Twitter that Season 5 Preproduction had commenced. Fan reports from Santa Fe during filming and Longmire Days July 8-10 should also increase our enthusiasm. Season 5 will drop in September 2016. These should all be events to look forward to in 2016.**_

 _ **I submit as for fan fiction storylines, as one fan writer recently put it, the writers have painted us into a corner which we keep repainting in various designs, but we can't move outward from there until some things are resolved. Two recent submissions from fan writers have created non-canon worlds of their own which have been well-done and entertaining, and beyond that, a couple of fan writers are actually writing (gasp) in our *own sandbox,* beyond this site.**_

 _ **To this end, I was just over visiting Romance Writers of America and the local Heart of Denver chapter, earlier. You now have to submit a 20k+ novella to be eligible to join RWA as a "serious" writer…much stiffer rules than before. Of course fan fiction wouldn't be appropriate there, but it's an intriguing idea to rejoin it. I rejoined Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers last fall when I started my novel. I work full-time and at least weekly babysit three grandkids. Yeah, as most of us do, we have jobs, families, and lives, oh, and we also plot Longmire stories. If I still manage to eke out occasional chapters "in all my spare time," it is because I enjoy it and love writing on multiple projects at the same time. I'm not as prolific here as some of the other writers, but I am persevering.**_

 _ **This past month I submitted a story to a local anthology through Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers. Next month the rules for their contest come out, and I will enter 4000 words of my "Misdirection" novel in that contest, and possibly 4000 words of my Epic SF novel "The Holopath." I'm toying with entering several of the RWA contests, if I can figure out a novella to submit to rejoin.**_

 _ **So, lots of projects which I enjoy working on (multiple stories going on in my head at the same time, don't tell the guys in the white coats) including some Longmire.**_

 _ **Re unfinished stories, in the Longmire universe, I have *finished* most of my stories. I do have three stories which I have not finished: "Leaving Durant," because Season 4 went off on another tangent than I portrayed, "Survival," which will have my characters from my novel visit in the near future, and this one, "Holiday from her Holiday." This week, "Holiday" wins because it's post-Season 4 and currently speaking to me. As I finish those chapters in "Misdirection," you will be able to get a glimpse of their characters. Of course in my novel, the brief scenes with the Durant characters are different, town is not Durant, etc etc.**_

 _ **Fans can go on about Reader Investment and all that, but all fan fiction pieces are a writer's labor of love and time. I could have written a chapter of my novel in the same time it took this gratis-for-anyone-to-read chapter, or a third of my novel in the time it took me to write "Holiday" thus far.**_

 _ **Please read and enjoy, no one is twisting prospective readers' arms. If you don't like this offering, there are over 230 stories here from which to choose to find one more to your taste.**_

 _ **Hint: Just saying "thank you," is a perfectly polite way to appreciate any fan writers' work.**_

 **Chapter Ten**

The accord transformed to acrimony about five minutes after they pulled onto I-80.

"So, I'll call Cady. You can just drop me at her place, I'll wash my clothes and get some sleep—"

"No. I can't protect you at Cady's."

"Walt, you can't protect anyone at your cabin. It's wide open and vulnerable. I'm not sleeping at the station—"

"You'll stay with me. We'll figure it out."

She inhaled sharply. Well, he was the sheriff. He had way more combat, and for that matter, security experience than she, and had survived to date. She just didn't like the way he had suddenly taken over her life in the last twenty-four hours. It reminded her uncomfortably of why she left.

"You do realize I don't have clothes for more than two days and I don't work for you, anymore? I can stay wherever I fucking want. I can work wherever I can find a job."

He looked over, as though she had slapped him. Well, maybe she had, in her own way. "I want to keep you safe."

"I want to keep you safe, too. He's after you, Walt, way more than me. He just wants get at me to hurt you."

"I failed you with Chance. I failed Branch. I don't want to fail you again."

"You saved me, and Sean, too, from Chance. Don't twist it, Walt."

"Whatever clothes or other things you'll need, can you pick up a few days' worth at the Walmart in Billings?"

"Sure…and the only prescription I have in Bismarck is for my pills. My birth control pills," she clarified, just in case he misunderstood. "I can probably get a Walgreens to transfer that, or Dr. Weston to re-write it."

He didn't seem to misunderstand that significance. "I guess…that's good?"

She rolled her eyes and looked out the passenger window. "What the fuck, Walt? If we let our guard down and get close now, we're sitting ducks. Do we want to make ourselves any more vulnerable while he's probably tracking us?"

"No. I just…" He stopped, as though refocusing on his driving. At the speed they were traveling, she hoped he did not lose that focus.

"You just what?

"I would like it. I want that. If someday…"

She tilted her head. He must be possessed, to be making declarations now.

"Walt, it's probably merciful we haven't done anything, yet. Yeah, we were more than thinking about it by the stream, but that sort of got shot out of the water after Fred located us."

He turned briefly, the intense eyes, piercing. "I've wanted that, and more, for a long time, Vic. I just don't want to…scare you off. I want you to be comfortable with it, too."

She took a huge breath. What a confession, and couched in that damned ambiguous Walt-speak. She laid a hand on his thigh. He took one off the wheel and covered hers, but his eyes were back on the road.

"If it's right, we'll get there, Walt, but there's still a chasm called Donna and an alley without Henry's truck in it lying between us. Those still weigh on me, no matter how wonderful it might feel short term to be with you. On the other hand, let's not let Keene or anyone else define or rush us."

"No." His hand came up, pulled her over to him on the big bench seat, stretching her seatbelt.

"Want to sit with me, former deputy? If so, belt up over here."

"Gee, Walt, former boss, all the boys say that." But she was grinning, and in the end, leaned into him and napped while he drove.

She woke up to her phone jangling. It looked to be about two hours later. It was Eamonn again, and she put him on speaker for Walt.

"The Feds are here at the station. They say to get back to Durant ASAP, no delays."

Walt looked over to her, looking decidedly conflicted. He probably had an idea what that meant for them for the near future.

As a result, they stopped in Billings for sandwiches, gas, and a pit-stop and were on the road again in twenty minutes. The proposed stop at Wal-mart never materialized.

XXX

She stirred. Walt drove on south, seemingly tireless despite the late afternoon sun glare.

He looked around as she blinked up at him sleepily. "We just crossed over into Wyoming. Almost home."

 _Home. For him._

"Where does that mean for me—for us—tonight?"

"Not sure, yet. I'll call Henry when we stop at the station."

"Henry?"

"Yeah, he always has something or knows someone somewhere."

"Walt, didn't Eamonn say the Feebs are involved, now?"

"Yeah…"

"Won't they try to put us somewhere?"

The thought obviously hadn't crossed his mind. "For one man?"

"For whatever is happening at the prison and on down, I should think."

He grunted again, and resumed driving.

She bit her lip, remembering why this man's silences had sometimes made her crazy. He was doing it again.

XXX

In the end, it was taken out of their hands. As they pulled up at the station, which should have been on skeleton staff during a holiday weekend after hours, a plethora of unmarked cars flanked the building.

"Not what I would call unobtrusive," she muttered.

Walt grunted. "Definitely not subtle."

"Well, Eamonn got his Feebs. I could spot this swarm a mile away, and if I can, no doubt Keene can, too."

"We have to assume Keene has knowledge we don't know he has." It was the first statement he'd made since crossing the state line.

They clambered out and looked at each other across the top of the Bronco.

"Do you have itchy shoulder blades?" She asked suddenly.

"Yeah. Let's get inside."

They did, to be swarmed by the swarm, a triumphant agent Towson greeting them with crossed arms like a dorm monitor as the naughty children sneaked back in after curfew.

"Did you take precautions on the way back?"

 _Precautions_? She thought hysterically, _Agent Towson, this very morning I toyed with the idea...taking no chances on Donna cooties, but tonight..._

"I was in an unmarked vehicle most of the time and didn't share my plans with anyone but ASD staff," said Walt. My destination was not common knowledge."

"Well, while you were out _not common knowledging_ , we got a call from Bismarck PD."

She had a terrible feeling about that...Prodencko's people wouldn't have called for no reason.

"Moretti's apartment was tossed sometime today. Whoever did it apparently wore gloves and had B&E skills."

An inappropriate part within her reflected that at least it wasn't Branch displaying his unexpected lock-picking skills. Tossed. So close to when she and Walt had left...like watching the place even as they both slept.

Chills ran down her back. Her shoulder blade itch had doubled in the last two minutes.

"Given the unexpected and inexplicable release of Stanley Keene, it is our combined opinion that Durant is unsafe for both of you."

She felt her nostrils distend. If that was the case...

"It is also our opinion you should both take a Leave of Absence, a Sabbatic, as it were, and go into the WPP until our investigation into the prison corruption and search for Keene is complete"

She bit her lip to not cuss, because she knew that search could, probably _would_ take months, while they languished in Witness Protection, a world which would be especially foreign to Walt. He had never been one to back down from a fight, nor to hide and wait, unless it was ritually hunting for meat. Beside her, she could feel Walt's whole body tighten. This was the Bad Boy she had grown to love, the one banked inside, ready to ignite any time now.

"I won't let Keene put me in a box," he growled. Maybe only she heard the growl as opposed to his normal gravel. "I can protect Vic—"

She put her hands out in defensive mode. "Hey, I don't even work here, anymore—"

"Based upon Bismarck, he's probably coming for you first, to draw Walt. You're the bait, and Walt can't protect you if Keene takes him out first."

She slumped, defeated. Of course she was the bait. She had set that trajectory in motion the snowy afternoon she had Keene duct-taped and repeatedly taunted him by cussing. That had been enough to sway him from directly targeting Walt. Her move to Bismarck was nothing more than a distraction to Keene, not an escape from him.

"I'm listening." Walt sounded cautious but serious, as though he had suddenly realized what the tossed apartment really meant. She knew it meant that Keene had been close, too close, to her at least once already.

"No doubt Keene thought the holiday would be a fine time to abduct and kill Moretti, to pull you away from the investigations of—Casino embezzlement? Strand? Corrupt Warden?—all of the above?—that you have going here."

"So what is your plan?" Asked Walt in that deadly soft voice he got when closing in on a suspect. She looked over, startled. She had not expected him to listen, not for a minute. He was going to stand down to protect her? She couldn't help exhaling loudly. She held in the fucks. If that were so, it would very likely entail both of them caving to Towson.

XXX

The new digs were utilitarian. A downtown Denver high-rise with elevators and video security. Two bedrooms, which Vic eyed as either being morally tactful or immorally depressing, a small kitchen and living room. The place had been redecorated recently. What, a safe house for other Feeb strays? She supposed the had to secure them somewhere…

In the bathroom sat several boxes of different color hair dyes which she eyed dubiously with a resounding, "Fuck!"

Walt had made a list and someone had packed for him, Ruby, maybe. They'd picked up his duffles on the side of the road outside of town, hopped on I-25, and not stopped except for gas until Denver.

As they left, she and Walt had been handed two burner phones for emergencies. They removed her own phone, along with all her numbers, and her very life. She still had her iPod, but it was precious little.

While Walt had the duffles, she still had no clothes. They had assured her that some in her size would be delivered. Accustomed to either uniforms or uniform shirts and jeans, she had very few, but at least the weather was warm, there would be a while to reunite with her winter gear.

Walt insisted on keeping his duty weapon Colt 1911, and she felt sure, would have added the rifle except he'd have been easily tagged by that. Of course she'd brought her Glock on the fishing expedition, and she had insisted on keeping it in spite of the Feeb admonitions to both of them about Denver carry laws.

For Walt, the most difficult part had been leaving his jackets and his cowboy hat. Instead, he had several ball caps from which to rotate. The Feebs had thoughtfully provided the Denver Rockies and Broncos caps to blend in, not his typical King Ropes or Sheridan Seed company ones which would have pinpointed his origins. They had given him a _windbreaker_ as a jacket. She wanted to laugh. She wanted to cry. Why make him look like a Feeb gone bad?

Worst of all, they had supplied him with a selection of plaid, short-sleeved shirts, the like of which she'd never seen him in. She vowed not to laugh if and when he tried one of them on.

She had washed all her clothes in the in-unit laundry,which took all of an hour, but was left with little to fold or put away.

The kitchen was stocked with lots of frozen dinners and some fruit. No booze. They would _both_ go stark, raving crazy.

With time on their hands and mostly a television for company, all she could think of was _Shit!_ They would both kill each other in a day. It happened with rats confined in a small space, right?

Walt came ambling out of the bedroom in a navy plaid button-down short sleeved shirt. His eyes were miserable, his lips bunched together.

"What do you think?"

She tried to say something positive. "Looks nice on you, makes your biceps and triceps look larger." Her observation was met with a snort.

"Makes me look even hairier."

Lips twisting, she moved over to him, laid a hand on one of those hairy arms. "Look at it this way, think of the stories?" Her attempt to lighten the mood was met with his look of disgust, and she rolled her eyes.

"All right then, this is fucking crazytown for both of us. Let's figure out how to trap Keene from here."

His eyes lit up at that, and she'd do anything to bring that light back. They sat well into the night working out possible avenues of pursuit and ways to defend themselves, but it was pretty obvious Walt chafed without his beloved Rainier.

"I'll put it on the list." One of their contacts would pick up the list they'd leave at the desk downstairs.

"We also need to decide if we want to try the hair dyes."

His face fell. Oh, well, back to drawing Keene out, and then whom? The next nemesis the warden deigned to release?

They needed knowledge. They had no access to it and no one feeding it to them. They might be able to work the case, even given their remote location, with some kind of access to databases. Instead, they were totally in the dark.

She microwaved a couple of frozen dinners, which went down like lead. After a while they stopped talking. She put on the TV, but all it was for her was white noise. He looked surprised when she switched it off.

"You don't have to turn it off for me," he said politely, as though a guest in her home.

Now she was surprised. "I didn't. I don't have it on, much. It's just a distraction."

The words hung heavy in the air between them.

"A distraction?" he asked very softly.

"Yeah, you know, can't think over it."

"Yeah, I know. Wayne Durant said it was because of my Unquiet Mind that I couldn't take the radio static.

She stared at him, getting the connection. Blinked her eyes thinking, oh, no, not her, too. Was it catching?

Damn.


	11. Chapter 11

_**A/N: Sorry if I came down a little hard in last A/N, been struggling with a lot of FB nonsense re Vic and Donna lately, but IMHO fan fiction is alive and well, and may be even more if it is as one fan suggests and Season 5 doesn't swing the pendulum back a bit toward the WIC relationship. Love the recent article from casting suggesting Season 6 is already under discussion.**_

 _ **Fred Manton is one of my characters, formerly a Marine, and has a small part in my novel,**_ **Misdirection** _ **, where my heroine's father was a Marine who didn't make it home.**_

 _ **Yet another version of Vectors is going to the Critique Group tomorrow night. It's set after the *second book* (yes, boys and girls, there is a second book) with Les and Hannah.**_

 _ **That being said, the force is strong with them, who want to get involved in this story. Here is an arc of several chapters with them. Hope this is entertaining to you.**_

 **Holiday from her Holiday**

 **(The REAL)**

 **Ch 11**

She eyed the light rail pamphlets lying on the coffee table, amused. Was Walt studying their local transportation options? She found a legal tablet and began writing, Walt his own notes from some of the paper he filched from her tablet.

They each spent a while trying to figure out their status. They began making a list of the points which had brought them both to this point. She made faces for each player and began to attach lines to them from each point. After a while, her forehead scrunched in concern, she looked up.

"Walt, I don't think we've looked at it like this. I think your gut instincts were right, but your problem was the means to resolution."

He looked up as she spoke. "What do you mean?"

"Every line, Walt, every corruption, failure, murder, Henry's arrests, everything ties back to Jacob Nighthorse. Either he knew about everything, or everything was being channeled through him to make him _look_ guilty. Either way, in your head you were right, but also not right. Why would he put himself in the way for every point?"

Walt was slow to speak. "Guilt, maybe, that things went further then he'd intended?"

She shook her head, moved closer and began to trace the points she had itemized.

"I could do this better with a spreadsheet, but see, here? He _knew_ about David Ridges but didn't order Martha's murder." She ignored the vaguely stricken look on his face. "He _knew_ about Malachi manipulating Henry in prison, but did nothing about it, or to encourage it. He _knew_ about Stanley Keene, he had to, because it was in the Malachi pipeline to the warden." She pointed to where half a dozen other lines led.

"I'm...not surprised."

"Maybe you were too close to it, and you had feelings involved, too. You can see where he lied repeatedly to you about Ridges, about the children Hector took, about being blackmailed over the skeletons...it all goes back to him."

"He's the ringleader?"

"No, I don't think so. I think he's a useful tool, but I don't think Malachi is the ringleader, either."

He made a noise of dissatisfaction. "It feels like we'll never figure it out."

"We will. I could do this better on my laptop, but it's back in Bismarck."

"You want Prodencko to ship it back to you?"

"I have no idea if it was taken in the break-in," she admitted. "We didn't get that far, the Feebs just whisked us out of there. I had a lot of questions they didn't give me a chance to ask."

"Me, too. I'm not a Towson fan, but this goes beyond that. Something there feels wrong. I can't pinpoint it, yet."

"I know." She tried to stifle a yawn.

He suddenly took charge. "Get some sleep, maybe it'll be clearer to us in the morning."

She frowned and stared at him.

"What?"

She shook her head. "I don't want to sleep alone, Walt. Never again as long as we're together."

"You sure?"

"I didn't say sex, plus, I'm going to run out of my pills. We didn't stop at Wal-Mart or Walgreens." She made it as plain as possible.

His eyebrows rose. "Oh. Okay, message received. Loud and clear."

"It'll happen, Walt," she said softly. "Let's just not make it worse by rushing things before we're ready. Neither of us are ready for that level of…well, complication, if there's a slip-up. Besides, right now, it's not safe for either of us, much less a child."

His head went down in apparent acknowledgment of that fact.

"You okay with that?" She felt terrible, putting it like that. A baby wouldn't be a slip-up, instead a blessing, but a child could definitely be catastrophic if they were still in a WPP or being hunted.

His mouth twitched up. "I could offer the old chestnut that waiting will make the heart grow fonder?"

"Fuck, no, Sheriff, just hornier," she said. "Both of us."

"Both of us," he echoed, before rising, stretching, and offering her a hand.

"For now," he amended as they silently made their way to the larger of the two bedrooms.

"For now." She echoed him, but was eyeing his fine denim-encased ass with indulgent enjoyment as she followed him in. At the very least being held would tide her over. Almost.

XXX

It was late the next morning when they both checked their phones. Nothing.

"Shouldn't we have had a delivery at the desk downstairs, and shouldn't we have gotten a call verifying that?"

"Yep," he said, and she could feel his agitation. "Something still doesn't feel right."

"Agreed."

The morning dragged into afternoon, without word from anyone. She wondered if this was what the WPP was like, endless waiting, frustration, fear of discovery.

"Should I use the burner to call Ferg?"

He jerked his head affirmative, obviously as on-edge as she.

The phone ran directly to Ferg's machine. She left a message and looked up to Walt's concerned face.

"That was weird. The station, then?"

"I don't know. I don't want to put them at any more risk than they are already."

"What, then?" Could he tell she was as antsy as anything and needing some action?

"I think you should visit the desk in brunette mode."

She grimaced, but had been afraid it would come down to that. She reluctantly retreated to the bathroom and began to read the instructions. Somewhere during the process, she realized she needed a towel, but her eyes were shut so the toxic stuff didn't drip into her eyes.

"Walt!"

She could hear his voice outside the door.

"You okay?"

"I need a towel."

The towels were in the bathroom.

"Okay, just a sec."

She heard the door open, an intake of breath. So, okay, she was naked, couldn't afford to ruin her few clothes.

"Suck it up and hand me a towel, please?"

One met her hand and she began to wrap her head, even as the bathroom door clicked shut. She would have paid a $100 to see his face.

Coward, she thought, and then thought that was pretty funny. It equated with his Santa appearance with the kids. Apparently even Absaroka bad-asses had their Achilles heels.

"Thanks. Only another five minutes, but I couldn't just sit there that long with my eyes squeezed shut.."

"Not a problem," but she thought it was mumbled from outside the door. What, had she really made him hard or something? That thought was enough to put a grin on her face despite her current state of transition.

She sighed. Almost time to wash it out.

XXX

Twenty minutes later, a close approximation of the Victoria Moretti she had known in the mirror in Philadelphia made her first appearance in Colorado.

"Sorry about that."

Walt's voice came from the kitchen, where the microwave was going.

"I'm not. At least, not now."

 _Fuck_. She _must_ had made him hard. Promising for the future, but too bad they really shouldn't act on it, now. She'd just taken her last pill, her period would come, and then they'd be in uncharted territory.

He was currently looking everywhere but her as in her tank and yoga pants, she brushed by him in the kitchen to get some ice water out of the fridge dispensers. He recoiled as if burned.

"That bad, huh?" She said. No mercy. It actually felt kind of good. Heady. _Take that, Donna!_

"You headed downstairs?"

"In a minute. What do you think?" She gave him a vixen's smile from the new dark chocolate curtain of hair.

His quick intake of breath did her good. "Beautiful. Is this what Philly Vic looked like?"

"Yeah, but I know you like blondes," she said , cautious.

"I do...but I like this, too. Makes you look more mysterious, maybe."

Mysterious. Something she had never, _ever_ been called before. She'd take it.

"Okay. I'd take my Glock but I have no idea where to wear it."

"Take the burner, maybe take the stairs a couple of flights, then catch the elevator down? Call me if you need help with the clothes. If they're there."

"Right."

She gathered herself for a minute, then strode out the door. No one was in the hall. She quickly accessed the stairway at the end of the hall, and began to rapidly descend. It would be a slower ascent, she was sure, especially if loaded down with clothes.

She darted to an elevator, empty, and it went directly to the first floor. Evidently it was not during rush hour and sparsely used otherwise.

The so-called concierge front desk was monitored by a young man with large round earrings deforming the holes in his ears. There had always been an ewww factor for the type, frequented by the uber-tattooed freaks of her world.

He politely searched for a delivery, for mail, for anything.

"Sorry, ma'am, nothing here," he said very respectfully, and she felt about ninety addressed as ma'am.

"Nothing? You're sure?"

"Positive. I've checked twice."

"No satchels, bags, or envelopes? Would those go somewhere else?"

"No, ma'am."

Her heart seized up. Was Walt, who she had left alone, the target, now?

She walked quickly from the lobby, but her steps lengthened to a run up the steps to the third floor, where she grabbed the elevator and it made excruciating progress upward.

She keycarded the door into a waiting Walt's arms, where she sought to quell both her breathing and trembling.

"Nothing down there. We still haven't heard back from Ferg. Something is fucked." He did not question her assessment. "What now?"

"I have no idea what Ferg's status is," he said, thinking. I don't feel like staying here as a sitting duck."

"I know!"

"As much as I'd like to, I don't think we should go back to Durant. We present a danger there to everyone, but I do need to make a couple of phone calls to put out inquiries in Durant. I hope Ferg and the team are all right."

"Yes. What's your idea?"

Finally he said with a sigh, "I might know someone."

"Someone you can trust?"

His eye met hers. "Yes."

Her head jerked to go for it. It was more than she had.

XXX

So there they were two hours later having descended the stairway almost ten flights, taking the elevator down to the basement, then the stairway up to the lobby floor, but exiting from the back.

It was a three block walk to the light-rail station. Handy, having those brochures Walt had filched on their way up from the lobby the day before. He seemed to navigate the train numbers with ease, and then they were both aboard, waiting transport. She was glad he'd insisted on hitting the cash machine before they left Durant. At least he had a small stake for them both if they needed it. He'd used the burner phone briefly before they left the apartment.

They were both carrying, why he wore a jacket and her piece was in her pack.

"Where are we going?"

"End of the line, the station at Santa Fe and 470."

"And from there...?"

"We should have a ride." He didn't share with her, but she didn't feel left out. She was somehow in the whirlwind of what had apparently transformed into a covert operation. She could only wonder at his contact.

They stood at the edge of the drop-off area, their packs on their backs. She felt a little like a refugee, tossed from one situation to the next.

A silver minivan pulled up. She almost laughed. A _minivan_?

Walt walked up, slid open the sliding door, and she followed him into the recesses. The face that turned was broad and kind, in his mid-twenties.

"Hey, Sheriff," the driver said.

"Hi, Steve. "Thanks for picking us up."

"No problem. It took a few minutes to get here from work, but they are pretty forgiving. They know I have a family."

"Yeah, sorry to take you out of the way. Here's the deal."

He went on to explain their current situation. Steve looked grim, appalled, then grim again. "Yeah, Dad called and said to extend you every assistance, and he'd reimburse me for anything."

"Well. I wasn't sure who to call."

"No problem, so you need a car?"

"I was thinking we'd get out of town a day or two."

"Dad said to come on over the hill. He has a guest room ready and everything."

Walt sounded relieved. "Okay, then."

"Plus, he said you need a prescription?"

Walt blushed, which made her blush a little, too. "Yes. Vic does."

"Do you want to get it here, or there?"

"Here." She said it firmly, but she had taken the last one the evening before, and who knew if they would even have Walgreens where they stopped over there?

"Okay, well, there's one a few blocks away. You can get gas and swing by on the way out of town."

Gas was first, followed by her meds and a small multitude of other things—purchasing feminine hygiene products, snacks, some peds socks and underwear, and several t-shirts. Walt pulled out his cash and paid without blinking an eye. He'd had a quarter century or practice living with women, after all.

Hopefully the Walgreens system didn't share their personal info with convicted felons, but they didn't linger. As they left Denver and ascended I-70 toward Lookout Mountain in Steve's late-model silver Toyota Camry, she began to breathe.

"This is so fucking beautiful!"

"You need to get out more." It was a joke. Walt had made a joke. She gave him a roll-eye questioning look, and he shrugged.

"Hey, I had a beautiful woman in my arms last night. I'm in a good mood."

Now the look she gave him became disbelief.

"We are on the run from a crazed felon and you are acting like a seventeen year old with his first girlfriend?"

He jerked his head, but behind the wheel of a most Walt-inappropriate vehicle, he was still smiling. Which made her suppress her own. She expected him to say any moment now he liked her and wanted to go steady.

Not that she didn't feel seventeenish or at least horny, herself. She had felt his interest every time she moved in the night, and she was a restless sleeper. It was a wonder either of them got any sleep. Still, being held for two nights in a row was definitely a paradox—comforting and yet teasing for what she—and she was pretty sure he—really wanted.

Now they might be headed for a quiet time together, she didn't want to be a Debby Downer, but she expected her period to start any day which could keep a hold on things for a while. At least she had her pills for the unforeseen future.

With easy precision, as though he knew the way, he swung the car around C470 to catch I70 up the mountain.

"So where are we going? This really isn't need to know, Walt."

'My friend Les, who lives near Grand Junction. He's a sheriff, too. A Colorado sheriff."

"Okay…so tell me about Les?"

"His brother and I served in the Marines in the early '80s. We were assigned to Beirut before the barracks bombings made it all go to shit. One of the first extremist acts against our country, but pretty much ignored in the states. This country still doesn't believe they are at war with us."

"Well…"

"Even Paris and San Bernadino didn't wake anyone up."

"So, Walt, back to Les…"

"His brother Steve and I became friends. Steve, the namesake of Les's son, who you've met. Steve was from Montana, me from Powder River area, so we were both considered cowboys in the unit. Our commanding officer was a guy named Tim Olufsen."

"Okay…"

"And Fred Manton, from near Bismarck…"

"Oh, so sort of like the Four Musketeers?"

A hint of a smile played across his face.

"Maybe, a little. More like young and homesick and the familiar faces helped?"

"Okay…"

"We had all gone to a party just before deployment. That was actually when I met Les. Steve and Tim were close, and Les liked Tim, too. Let's see, oh, yes, Tim's wife was pure Crow, and Steve and Les could speak Crow, so they could talk. Their baby girl was pretty cute—and blonde."

"They could speak Crow?"

"They grew up bordering the Rez, near Billings."

"And the little blonde girl?"

"I think there's one picture of Les holding the little thing. Let's see, Tim's wife was named Reba? Rena? Something like that."

"The little girl sounds cute."

"Was, but…then the bombings happened. Steve and Tim didn't make it. Fred and I were on duty, and survived."

"Oh, shit." She felt like she should say something more profound.

"It's okay, Vic. It was thirty years ago."

"I am so sorry for your loss just doesn't seem to cut it."

"I know. Thing is, I met Les again at the memorial, he's a few years younger, but we've stayed in touch and become friends. He married local rodeo royalty, Jane. They have four kids and a ranch, but he sheriffs to help pay tuition."

"So we're going to stay with Les and Jane?"

"Well…no."

They passed by a sign proclaiming Idaho Springs, mine tours.

She spoke up. "Someday, if come back through here to visit your friend, I'd like to stop at every place, and just be a fucking tourist."

That won her a blinding smile. She tilted her head.

"Okay…?" She hoped her confusion showed.

"We'll definitely come back if I have any say."

"Okay, but back to Les and Jane…"

"Jane passed away over a year ago from a weak heart. Congestive heart failure from an infection. She refused to even get on the list for a new one. I know he wanted her to, but...she didn't. She…was terrified of pain and complications."

"Oh, no."

"Yeah, well…things happen.'

They sure did. She thought of Walt's anger after Martha was murdered, and laid a hand over his where it rested on his right thigh.

"I'm sorry it was so awful for you so long after Martha, Walt. I hope it's a little better, recently."

He looked over surprised. "Me? Yes, better." And then he got quiet. She suspected he was lost in his head again, and she had sent him back.

Another four hours of driving with Walt in his head would be interminable, so she asked, "What's our plan when we get there?"

He turned his head briefly, as though shifting gears mentally.

"Find a place to land for a week or until we can figure out what the hell is going on. Until we can go back with a plan in hand."

"Okay." She could get behind that idea.

Though quiet, it was a pleasant drive.

Fortunately, Glenwood Canyon had reopened after the rockslide which had closed most of I-70 through there for over a month, but her mouth almost dropped open as they drove through.

"And they really have hot springs near here?"

"Yep." The smile she had missed for so long was back. "Another place for us to stop next time." As though there would be one.

She tried again to find something on the radio to break the silence, but there wasn't much which got reception.

Despite the quiet drive, she still worried at the unknowns which lay ahead.


	12. Chapter 12

**Holiday from her Holiday**

 **Chapter 12**

 _ **A/N: Fading in for a brief visit to LL…Longmire Land. I should have my WordPress site up and running later this week, for the fan royalty who was so negative. Good to be back, with another installment of "Walt and Vic meet my western Colorado sandbox."**_

They descended into a smaller metro area than Denver. Vic could see a huge mesa in the distance, but they passed all the exits to Grand Junction. Walt kept driving, unperturbed.

"Where are we headed?" She really wanted to know, if they weren't stopping in relative civilization.

His lips bunched. "Peachy, Colorado. Home of orchards, mesas, wine country." He looked over and raised his brows. "This part of the west is very romantic, they say." He waggled his eyebrows.

"Uh-huh." She hoped the sarcasm showed.

"Could be?"

She shrugged. She was in an unaccountably good mood given she'd been dragged from Bismarck to Durant to Denver and now western Colorado all because of some conspiracy, especially since the FBI seemed to have been compromised somewhere in the thick of it all.

Well, she was convinced it was enough that here she was with Walt, who she had written off six months before. And this was a different Walt, one who smiled, who cracked the occasional joke, who ate burgers with her again, and now held her at night. This could not be the same man who had pushed her away so callously. Something had happened in the last six months, she was just still not sure what.

"So who is in Peachy?"

"Well, Lester, for one. He has a friend named Jim Keller who's an attorney I've met before."

"So this Lester is really the Sheriff of Orchard County?"

"Yep."

"Have you ever locked horns with him over a case?" My God, she really did have the local lingo down, didn't she? Philly Vic no more.

"Not really, such different jurisdictions."

"I suppose that's true."

"Steve said we're welcome as long as we want to stay. His daughter Lita's there, but it's just the two of them. His son Simon starts back, I think as a—junior?—at University of Colorado in a month or so and is already living in a dorm."

"So he has room for us."

"So Steve said. I actually had something else in mind…but I need to talk to Lester first."

She tilted her head, puzzled, as they descended into a little valley flanked by two small mesas. Rows of orchards marched along the bases of both.

"Fuck, that is so scenic."

"Yeah, it's beautiful over here. All sorts of fruit orchards run up against the mesas. Lester owns half of a winery that his brother runs. They raise varietal grapes and put out some decent wines."

"So, you both are sheriffs and lost your wives? And, wait…you also know something about _wine_? More than a few things in common?"

"And the Marine connection, so a few, but he's got four kids and he hasn't been a sheriff as long. He's younger."

"Dating?"

Walt made a face. "How would I know that?"

"I mean, guys talk, don't they?"

"It's only been a little over a year for him, Vic. We haven't discussed it. Why do you want to know, anyway?"

She thought he sounded almost… _nervous,_ so all she said was, "Oh."

"What…are you looking for him to ask you out?"

"I—" She didn't want to screw this up. Instead of snapping, she exhaled. "No. I—guess I just don't want him doing what you did."

He tilted his head, but his lips pressed together. His stubborn look. "That being?"

"The whole checking out on ASD for a year. It wasn't until after the case on Pronghorn Ridge you finally returned to your job. I've never seen anyone else just disappear from life for that long, pretty much the entire first six months I worked for you."

"Well."

"You seemed happier after that."

A pause filled the Toyota. He took a deep breath. "I was. You were the reason, Vic."

"I made you happy?" She'd been happier, with him, with work, even when Sean was being a dickhead.

"Happy, but still angry inside. Angry Martha was murdered, angry at the murderer, angry at myself that I failed her, angry that she had left me alone."

Vic unclicked her belt and slid toward him. The gearshift kept them apart, and she cussed under her breath. He brought his right arm around her and she leaned in.

"You helped me through that, Vic. Not by trying, just by being there. By my side, and by not letting me stay inside my head. Not letting me get away with anything. No one else in Durant had the guts to do that."

She burrowed into his shirt. "And then you pushed me away."

His arm gathered her in tighter. "I know."

They pulled into a charming tree-lined street, and up to a simple two-story Craftsman house.

"This is it."

She looked over to him that he had found it without a map, written directions or GPS. "Been here, before?"

"A couple of times, he, his sons and I went fishing once, hunting another. Once in a while I just needed to get away from Durant." He seeme to wander off in his head again.

That last line made her take note. She'd never heard him express any interest in travel or leaving Wyoming. She'd never seen him take a vacation. That must have been before Martha's death, before she was hired.

"From Martha?"

He shrugged. "Not necessarily.

"Cady?"

"No."

"Okay…"

"Just leave it." She recognized it as a topic to file away for later.

A man maybe not quite as tall and somewhat stockier came striding from the house. This must be Lester. He wore a cowboy hat, which almost hid heavy brows over a lightly-creased but kindly face. His sideburns were threaded with silver. She saw where Steve got his looks, and why Walt liked him, Lester had on a plaid shirt and jeans despite the heat.

"Walt! Good to see you again!"

Walt walked around the car, and did the man shake/hug thing. She unbelted, got out and waited for him to introduce her, before noticing the mossy green eyes. The man did have nice eyes.

"Lester, this is Victoria Moretti. Vic, Lester. Vic is—was—er, my—deputy."

She smiled and gave Lester a firm handshake, both aware and amused that Walt no longer knew what to call her.

"Late of Bismarck P.D.."

Lester's brows raised, and they were formidable, indeed. Vic decided instantly she preferred Walt in every way, but the other sheriff did seem kind.

"We would like to make some phone calls and figure out what the hell is going on," said Walt.

"Sure. We'll head over to my office after lunch, which is ready and waiting, first."

Lunch was heavenly. She gave Lester high marks—he could cook. The lunch he served proved he could more than cook, he was damned fine at it.

Her compliment "Even better than pancakes!" earned her a glower from Walt.

She knew he was nervy, uptight and worried over almost everything, but the glower turned to a look which she had seen before, like he'd get even later. She lifted an eyebrow, like _message received_.

After lunch, Walt insisted helping Lester rinse dishes.

He put the last of them in the dishwasher before turning to Lester.

"Still have that cabin near the end of the box canyon?"

Lester finished drying his hands, surprised. "I do. You want to hole up there?"

"If it's available. Haven't been there since you and the boys and I went fishing up there."

"Still plenty ot trout in the stream."

"Vic might like that." She knew he was referring to their aborted trip to Fred's, and what had almost transpired there.

"Sure. "I'll give you the keys and let Thad and Arliss know you'll be by, and in what vehicle. She usually stocks it before guests come in."

"We can, we don't want to be any trouble."

"No trouble, Walt, no trouble at all. After what you've said, why don't you make your calls from here, we'll pass on the station. No reason for more people to see you, and It will give Arliss time to freshen the place."

Walt looked to Vic, who gave him a look of agreement.

"You can use my office."

The man was definitely kind.

XXX

"We should keep watch, just in case."

"So much for a relaxing week sleeping in your arms." He blushed, to her satisfaction.

She of course was in Mother Nature's thrall, four more days. Three left in their week there, if there were no surprises.

Walt insisted she go to bed first. Chivalry was not yet dead, neither in keycards nor in Walt Longmire's sense of what was right.

He had come to bed late, shaken her shoulder, and taken second shift. She woke, showered, made coffee and had just pulled her feet under her on the glider, and tensed when she saw a mote of dust in the distance, which turned into a large motor truck. She had a moment where she almost called Walt, but relaxed as she recognized Lester's Yukon.

He pulled up and stepped down.

"Walt awake?"

"Not yet. Can I offer you coffee?" It would only be neighborly, since it was his house.

"Sure. I kind of wanted to get your opinion on something, if you have time."

All she had at the moment was time.

"Sure."

She went in, brought out sugar packets and a bottle of milk with the coffee, just in case.

"I take it black."

"Ah, another sheriff who takes it black."

He gave a somewhat sheepish grin, and removed his hat as he sat on the chair facing her. She was instantly reminded of Walt's inquisition couch in his office. A couch she had dreamed of using someday in an entirely different way…

"Walt mentioned you a while back. Said you came from Philly?"

"Yep," she said, almost smacking her lips. She wasn't entirely comfortable where the conversation might be going. She really didn't want to have to rebuff Walt's friend if he was hitting on her.

"There's, um, someone I might be interested in."

Oh, great, was he as fumble-tongued as Walt? She mentally prepared a gentle rejection, just in case.

"Um. No, that's wrong. I _am_ interested in her. She's a vet."

"Oh," she said, initially more surprised than pleased. She quickly reversed on that. Walt would be pleased, too, but he was more knowledgable than she about former servicemen and women..

"I think she's about your age, but I haven't dated since, well, Walt probably mentioned that I lost my wife last year."

"Yeah," she said, with genuine compassion. "I'm very sorry about that."

"I, uh, I just don't know what the current convention is, how to go about it."

"Current—what?"

"I mean, how do you get asked out, now?"

That question threw her, she hadn't been in a real dating situation for a long time, either, and then, it seemed like flirting had been the norm. Maybe it wasn't, and she sure wasn't going to suggest that.

"Well…tell me about her."

"Well, I believe she's part Indian."

"Indian, like…"

"Like Crow. Like in your Durant neck of the woods. My family's originally from near Billings."

"Oh." Then he was probably right about the vet's heritage.

"I think you might have noticed her yesterday while you were in town. She was in the grocery store I took you to."

"A woman?"

"Tall, long blonde braid, darkish skin…? She was wearing a camo coat?"

"Oh!" She'd thought the woman was some kind of local activist or troublemaker.

"She treats both large and small animals. She's worked on the horses here, before.

"Vet? _Veterinarian_? And you want to ask out the vet?"

"Yes." He seemed acutely embarrassed. "I mean, she's younger than I am. I've been worried the local ranchers will attract her. You know, better-off than a sheriff. Any advice?"

Vic's lips twisted. She thought of her own complicated situation. "Not so much. Have you told her you like her?"

"No, we—we sometimes see each other at county calls. Dead deer in the road, the like. Sometimes she comes out to euthanize or treat wildlife, or dogs hit by cars."

"Cheery stuff…have you thought of going to her clinic or her house and asking her out?"

From his deer-in-the-headlights look that reminded her of Walt, she guessed not.

"It's like"—she wanted to be bracing—"riding a bicycle. You know, you never forget? Just tell her you would like to take her to dinner. Do either of you have anything in common?"

He twisted his hat in his hands. "I believe so." He didn't elaborate.

"Then you should tell her, probably sooner, not later. She's very pretty."

He looked her straight in the eye. "She's the most beautiful woman I've ever seen, and if she's amenable, I would like to marry her, someday."

"Oh!" Now, _that_ she had not expected. She took a last sip, only to see Walt standing all rumpled in t-shirt and jeans in the frame of the open door.

He smiled and she melted. She didn't care if Lester Brannan saw it.

"Victoria here, she's been giving me some advice. I'm an old dog with old tricks." He laughed.

"You'll do fine," she said, making room for Walt on the glider.

"You want some coffee?" she asked him. "I'll get it for you if you two want to talk."

"Sure," Walt croaked. He must have just put his jeans on and come out.

"Need a refill, Lester?"

"Sure, if you have enough. I'm not much awake yet, either."

She smiled and headed into the kitchen. A woman must have designed it, because the kitchen made sense. She filled a mug for Walt, and took the pot out to refill Lester's.

As she neared the door, she heard Lester's voice.

"So…Vic is your…?"

Walt must have shaken his head. "Still trying to figure that out."

"She loves you."

 _She_ almost dropped the pot.

"She giving you advice on love?" he asked wryly. Wish she'd give me some."

She backed up and made some noise. She refrained from _fuck_ but wanted them to know she was close. She handed Walt his mug.

"Thanks," said Lester with a grin as she refilled his cup. His wife had been the recipient of that smile, and possibly the vet would be, if Lester played his cards right. Lucky ladies. As she laid the pot on a hot pad on the table, she caught Walt looking at her. She smiled back. A private smile.

Maybe the _veterinarian_ wasn't the only lucky lady around.


End file.
